Big Tech's 'immense power' must be contained: EU

"We need to contain this immense power of the big digital companies, because we want the values that we cherish in the offline world also to be respected online. At its most basic, this means that what is illegal offline should be illegal online too," she said.

"And we want the platforms to be transparent about how their algorithms work, because we cannot accept that decisions that have a far reaching impact on our democracy are are taken by computer programs alone."

Von der Leyen was speaking via remote video link to the annual conference, which is being held largely virtually this year.