Author: Damien Geradin
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Is the Commission abandoning the effects-based approach in antitrust enforcement? And do the latter’s strict requirements led to the DMA proposal?
A few days ago, Global Competition Review announced that Carles Esteva Mosso, Deputy-Director General at DG Competition, would leave the Commission to join Latham & Watkins in Brussels. The article contained various quotes from Latham partners bracing themselves for their new recruit, but also the following comment from a well-known member of the Brussels competition…
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DMA proposal: Should there be a greater role for the Member States?
One of the striking features of the DMA proposal is that it only grants a minimal role to the Member States, the Commission opting for the centralization of the implementation and enforcement of the DMA at EU level. The question is whether this approach is desirable. It seems that Member States such as Germany, Belgium,…
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Apple and Google’s lowering of app store fees to “help” developers : Separating the wheat from the chaff
App developers that sell “digital goods or services” on the App Store or Google Play must use these app stores’ in-app payment solutions (respectively called In-App Purchase or “IAP” in the case of the App Store and Google Play Billing or “GPB” in the case of Google Play). The mandatory use of IAP or GPB…
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Competition law and digital markets : Do we need a DG COMP 2.0 ?
In an earlier blog post, I discussed what could, or perhaps should, be the role of EU competition law in a post-DMA environment. That is an important question considering that if the DMA proposal is adopted, a range of issues that are traditionally addressed under EU competition rules will (also or instead) be addressed under…
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Should all digital gatekeepers be subject to the same obligations under the DMA proposal?
While many companies active in digital markets support the Digital Markets Act (“DMA”) proposal, a recurrent concern comes from the fact that the obligations contained in Articles 5 and 6 of the proposal will in principle apply to all gatekeepers independently of the core platform service (“CPS”) they deliver and their business model. While Article…
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What is a digital gatekeeper?
In the past couple of years, several reports have concluded that a small number of large digital platforms act as gatekeepers in that they are necessary gateways between business users and their prospective customers. This allows these platforms to take advantage of the dependency of these business users on their services by imposing unfair trading…
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What will be the role of EU competition law in a post-DMA environment ?
One of the questions that is regularly raised regarding the Digital Markets Act (“DMA”) recently proposed by the European Commission concerns its relationship with and impact on EU competition law. In particular, will EU competition law and competition authorities continue to play an important role in digital markets once the DMA has been adopted? Or…
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The Digital Markets Act proposal: Is this a sound document?
Like most competition lawyers working in the tech space, I eagerly read the Digital Markets Act (DMA) proposal when it came out on 15 December 2020. My first reaction was positive. As a proponent of the idea that some ex ante regulation is needed to address the concerns created by digital gatekeepers, I was pleased…
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Digital Platforms and the Law: Ten Predictions for 2021
Happy New Year to the readers of this blog! 2020 was an eventful year for digital platforms – or, at least, the largest of them – with a combination of lawsuits, competition law investigations and regulatory proposals. When we set up our Platform Law Practice at Geradin Partners, we did not know we would be…
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The EU Digital Markets Act in 10 points
Yesterday the European Commission unveiled its much-expected proposal for a Digital Markets Act. Our general impression is that it is a solid and sophisticated piece of work with a fairly wide scope of application (i.e., going beyond the GAFA), which would place significant constraints on digital gatekeepers. Here is our (very preliminary) analysis in 10…