The European Commission lawmakers want to shape the future of virtual worlds and metaverse with regulation and taxes.
EU lawmakers are moving in on the metaverse and making it plain that, whatever newfangled virtual world/s and/or immersive social connectivity that tech industry hype involving the term may refer to, these next-gen virtual spaces won’t escape one hard reality: Regulation.There may be a second metaverse certainty too, if the Commission gets its way: Network infrastructure taxes.
In a Letter of Intent published September 2022, setting out the bloc’s policy priorities for 2023 — and accompanying her annual State of the European Union speech — the EU’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, confirmed the Commission will put forward an “Initiative on virtual worlds, such as metaverse” next year. In her letter penned in difficult geopolitical and economic times, von der Leyen urges the bloc to stay the course on the green and digital transitions, encouraging EU institutions to stick with the transformative push for sustainability and digitalization and implement key pieces of the plan already agreed on.
In this article TechCrunch discusses Meta (AKA Facebook) founder metaverse initiative and its economical aspects. A Commission spokesperson told TechCrunch: “The Commission is closely monitoring potential specific legal issues, such as defining the applicable law in various ongoing interactions and transactions by metaverse participants (including anonymous participants or those coming from third countries), liability questions or issues around digital assets.”
