BERLIN (Reuters) - The dominance of big internet platforms from the United States raises the question of whether competition authorities in Germany and Europe should intervene to defend Europe's economic and social model, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.
"The platform economy is a big problem," she said at an event celebrating the 70th anniversary of Germany's "social market" economic model.
"It challenges both our competition authorities and the EU's, and raises the question of whether they need to get involved in the matter of the big concentration of big platforms from the U.S.," she added.
Amid deep tensions between the U.S. and Europe over trade, Merkel said that Europe needed to see the fate of its car industry as a security matter, just as the U.S. had when it threatened punitive tariffs on imports of German cars.
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Michelle Martin)
