British consumers could face a greater risk of exploitation after Brexit, if it loses the EU's clout to fine multinational companies, according to the Liberal Democrats.
New analysis by the party shows 44 companies have been fined a total of €13.8bn (£12.1bn) by the European Commission since May 2017, for offences that increase prices and reduce choice for consumers, such as operating cartels, abusing market dominance and misleading competition authorities.
Tech giant Google has been fined some €8.26bn for several antitrust violations, including preventing rivals from advertising on third-party websites, pushing its shopping service on search engine users, and imposing restrictions on Android devices to cement the dominance of its search engine.
The firm was also fined €50m in January by a French regulator for breaching the EU’s data protection rules.
Other big firms to incur fines in the same period include truck firm Scania (€881m), Mastercard (€571m), Citigroup (€311m), Facebook (€110m) and Nike (€12.6m).
Ahead of the European parliament elections on Thursday, Lib Dem deputy leader Jo Swinson warned that the UK would not have the same clout to stand up to multinationals on its own.
She told The Independent: “Labour and Conservative governments have consistently shown that they are both unwilling and unable to stand up to giant multinational companies when they exploit consumers.
“Only with the combined strength of 28 countries acting together through the EU can we protect consumers from rising prices and limited choice by breaking up international cartels and monopolies.
"Only together can we fight tax avoidance and the abuse of personal data.”
Ongoing Brexit chaos in Westminster has cast a cloud of uncertainty over whether certain aspects of EU law will apply in Britain.
Under the terms of Theresa May's deal, competition law would have continued to apply until the end of the transition period in December 2020.
But if the UK crashes out without a deal, it will no longer be covered by the commission and UK domestic law will be supreme.
Google has made changes to its products in response to formal concerns from the commission, including changes to Google Shopping and Android products.
