face a swath of proposed European regulations aimed at curbing their alleged anticompetitive behavior, making them pay more taxes and compelling them to shoulder more responsibility for illegal content on their platforms, said a top European Union official.

The aim is to clearly delineate new legal boundaries for tech companies, rather than just apply existing laws covering fields such as antitrust regulation.

Vestager said in an interview with a small group of reporters.

to pay Ireland $14.5 billion in allegedly unpaid taxes -- last year was promoted to vice president of the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, in charge of competition and new legislation for the digital sector.

Tech companies have said that they want to work with the commission to craft the new laws, but several have raised concerns about elements of the proposals.

More European regulation in the digital sector is likely to have an impact beyond the Continent, with other jurisdictions following suit.

Justice Department last month proposed rolling back rules that limit companies' responsibility for what people post on their platforms, and the U.K.'s antitrust authority has proposed creating a special antitrust unit focused on digital markets, which could have powers potentially including ordering large companies to share data with smaller ones.

Vestager spelled out three separate pieces of new legislation that are likely to be presented by the end of this year, including one tackling platforms' liability for their content.

Vestager said, "so that they are all governed by these sets of rules, and that goes for platforms wherever they come from on this planet.".

and Europe have shielded tech companies from much liability for what their users do on their platforms.

Vestager said in the interview that she is seeking enhanced investigative powers that would allow her to order all companies in a certain sector to change their behavior so they don't monopolize a particular market.

In taxation, the EU is considering establishing its own digital tax now that the Trump administration and European countries including France have reached an impasse in international talks on the topic.

The European Commission, like several European countries, has said over the past year that if international talks fail by the end of this year, the bloc will put forward its own digital tax proposals.

Vestager said a digital tax is justified by fairness.

"The commission should carefully weigh evidence of new potential theories of harm against the potential costs of top-down intervention," said Kayvan Hazemi-Jebelli, competition and regulatory counsel for the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a lobby group that represents companies including Amazon, Facebook and Google.