France President Emmanuel Macron defended the European Union's tough new laws on data privacy on the eve of the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, as tech companies brace for more regulatory scrutiny.
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Speaking at the annual VivaTech conference in Paris, Macron dismissed criticism of European protectionism aimed at Silicon Valley's biggest companies such as Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc., Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., saying the new laws were a step in the right direction to create a "new social model" for EU citizens, rather than an attempt to stifle innovation.
Years in the making, GDPR comes into effect May 25 and proposes a swathe of legislative changes that will expand EU regulators' territorial reach, give consumers greater control of their personal data and impose steep sanctions for noncompliance, including fines of €20 million or 4% of annual turnover for the most serious breaches.
In response to concerns that tighter regulation could make Europe's tech ecosystem less competitive, Macron said governments and politicians must be held to account for issues such as poor data privacy frameworks, cyberbullying, tax evasion by tech companies and inadequate protection laws for independent workers.
He added that sweeping regulatory changes must also be enforced in other areas of tech to establish true "European sovereignty" in the industry.
Macron said: "We have to do the same for cloud. We have to do the same for all these different ecosystems."

