A group of privately operated media houses in Germany are calling for a digital tax on US technology giants and urging the federal government to take steps towards the press support outlined in the coalition agreement. The chairman of the “Media Association of the Free Press” Philipp Welte, a Burda board member, lamented in the Funke Media Group’s newspapers (Tuesday editions) that a market distortion is being caused by large US players like Meta, Google and Amazon. Welte stated, “A handful of US technology companies and their Chinese dictator-backed clones are suffocating the free internet. In the process, they are gradually taking away the online livelihood of independent journalism from publishers.” He added that this is a “gigantic collateral damage for the state, society, the economy and science and the platform’s billion-dollar profits are also largely tax-free.”
Welte welcomed the initiative of the Federal Minister of Culture, Wolfram Weimer, to introduce a digital tax and joined the call for it. This tax would “give the federal budget a greater financial scope for supporting the free press.” The association’s chairman criticized the government for not fulfilling its promises to support the press, despite being included in two coalition agreements. By introducing a digital tax, the federal government could ensure greater fairness in the digital world. Welte stated, “The fact is that the enormous market power of these companies is a structural and order-political problem for the European digital economy – and is increasingly becoming a threat to the cultural and political stability of our democracy.