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US tech giants Amazon and Apple haven’t signed as much as a brand new French initiative to get international tech firms to publicly decide to ideas together with paying their fair proportion of taxes, authorities officers stated on Monday.
French President Emmanuel Macron has searched for the previous three years to persuade tech giants into collaborating with governments on a collection of world challenges resembling combating hate speech on-line, preserving privateness or contributing to state coffers.
Amid a public outcry about expertise teams’ good fortunes in the course of the coronavirus pandemic this yr, Macron’s advisers stated on Monday that the president had requested tech firms to enroll to a brand new initiative known as “Tech for Good Call” underlining ideas for the post-COVID world.
The French authorities launched an inventory of 75 executives of tech firms that had signed as much as the initiative to date, together with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft President Brad Smith. Apple and Amazon had been notably absent from the checklist.
Apple declined to remark, however French officers stated talks with the group had been ongoing and so they may nonetheless be a part of the initiative, particulars of which will probably be revealed formally by Tuesday. A consultant for Amazon, which French officers stated had declined to affix the initiative, didn’t return a request for remark.
“The goal is also to… observe objectively those who decide to play ball and align their interest with individuals and societies and those who stay out of this joint movement,” a presidential adviser instructed a press briefing.
Leading tech executives resembling Facebook’s Zuckerberg attended the so-called “Tech for Good” summit hosted by the French president on the Elysee Palace in 2018, which gave start to working teams on points which have develop into sources of pressure between governments and “Big Tech”.
The new initiative shouldn’t be legally binding, however French officers stated Macron will use it as a device to affect upcoming negotiations at international boards on regulating Big Tech.
The US and European governments have clashed over the difficulty of taxing Big Tech throughout talks on the OECD.
Signatories to the “Tech for Good Call” decide to “contribute fairly to the taxes in countries where (they) operate”; forestall the dissemination of “child sexual abuse material, terrorist or extreme violence online contents”; and “support the ecological transition”, amongst different issues.
© Thomson Reuters 2020
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