Mr. Ronan Costello:

The question was on the sanctions and our points we have made on the sanctions. I absolutely agree the Bill and the law, when passed, should have sanctions which are meaningful and effective, otherwise that would be a problem. Our issues with the sanctions, as currently defined, can be split into two categories. The first would be the international precedent. Unfortunately, we are seeing a trend internationally whereby sanctions in terms of the throttling and blocking of services and the criminal liability of senior management are incorporated into legislation in countries around the world and they are often used as the first point of call when platforms are deemed not to be compliant with a piece of legislation.

When countries in the EU or further afield pass laws with such models, they are often exported to other countries, which then point back to the EU and say that because a country there did it, it should be fine for that them to do it too. Unfortunately, however, the laws are enforced in a different way, with different political agendas and different motivations.

The other issue we have with, for example, financial sanctions is the potential that they would present an existential issue for start-up platforms or SMEs that are trying to establish themselves, or even platforms that are well known but may not have the same commercial success or footprint as the largest platforms. There is a concern that those financial sanctions should be proportionate and certain thresholds should be met before they are implemented.