European Parliament invites CEOs of four major US tech giants to attend antitrust hearing

      In the early morning of January 23rd, Beijing time, the European Parliament plans to hold a hearing in Brussels on February 1st, inviting the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google's parent company Alphabet to attend, in an attempt to suppress the power of American technology giants.

　　In the coming months, the European Parliament will provide its opinion on proposals from the European Commission that would require the companies to compete fairly with their rivals and do more to tackle fake news and harmful content online, or face huge fines.

　　"The purpose of the planned hearing is to engage with the CEOs of four of the world's leading platform companies to understand their current business models and their future concepts in an environment of challenges posed by changing market conditions," the European Parliament said in its invitation letter. "This hearing will help members of the European Parliament prepare for the upcoming discussions on new digital industry regulations. For the above reasons, we would like to clarify that this invitation is limited to company CEOs only."

　　The invitation said the European Parliament was willing to reschedule the hearing to another day in February or March, but people close to the companies expressed doubts that they would accept the invitation.

　　Earlier on Friday, it was reported that Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai will hold a video conference call with EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, who is pushing for strict new rules, on January 25, according to the European Commission's schedule. A European Commission spokesman said Vestager will discuss digital and competition issues with Pichai.