Author: Konstantina Bania

By Dr. Konstantina Bania and Philine Wassenaar A deep dive into the European Commission’s first wave of Digital Markets Act enforcement, ongoing investigations, and what the 2026 review tells us about regulating Big Tech in the age of AI The promise and the reality Two years ago, the EU launched one of its most ambitious…

Over the past decade, a striking paradox has emerged in digital content markets. On the one hand, we have an unprecedented explosion of creativity; independent journalists, podcasters, musicians, game developers and influencers can, in principle, reach global audiences from a laptop. On the other hand, a shrinking number of platforms increasingly determine which content is…

By Dr. Konstantina Bania By the time a digital‑markets case reaches a court room, a paradoxical situation has arisen: the business model in the file is obsolete, the market definition section reads like historical fiction, and the junior in chambers is already using the platform that judges were told “doesn’t really exist”. That mismatch between…

By Dr. Konstantina Bania A California jury has done something US courts have long refused to do: hold Meta and YouTube legally responsible not for what users post, but for how their platforms are designed to keep children hooked. By finding defective design and negligence and bypassing the traditional safe harbour of Section 230, the…

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) establishes a centralised enforcement model whereby the European Commission “is the sole authority empowered to enforce [the DMA]” (see recital 91). National authorities are the Commission’s enforcement partners. This is explicitly stated in Article 37 of the DMA, which states that the Commission and the Member States shall “work in…

Over the past few weeks, two important developments have taken place that affect news (and, more broadly, content) markets. Both these developments concern Google. First, Google published the result of an experiment it had conducted to assess whether news content is valuable to its properties. Second, Google announced that it would start providing its AI…

On 25 February 2025, the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) delivered its judgment in Android Auto, which refined the so-called essential facilities doctrine. This doctrine is one of the most debated concepts in (EU) competition law because it challenges the freedom of dominant undertakings to conduct a business by imposing an obligation to…

The beginning of 2025 was marked by two important developments in the digital platform landscape. First, Meta announced that it would change the content moderation policies of Facebook and Instagram in the US, significantly reducing the amount of fact-checking. However, this decision will not come without regulatory challenges on the other side of the Atlantic;…