Tag: ex ante regulation
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The P2B Regulation is not consigned to oblivion: ACM launches market study, reminding us that transparency in the platform economy is important
The Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) announced a few days ago that it will launch a market study into how platforms deal with the rules laid down in the Platform-to-Business (P2B) Regulation. The P2B Regulation is a regulatory initiative that may not have received the attention it deserves. This could be explained by…
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The UK’s regulatory regime for Big Tech: will the Government dare to make it more effective?
The British Government’s consultation on the design of the new regulatory regime for Big Tech (the “Consultation”) closed on Friday. We gave our initial thoughts on this legislation back in July. This blog post picks out some of the other important issues. For the most part, the Government has followed the advice of the CMA’s…
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Private damages in the new digital regulations – A fine balance to tread
A picture of “astonishing diversity and total underdevelopment”. Thus spoke a 2004 Report that surveyed competition damages actions across the EU at the time. It took ten years from there to adopt the Damages Directive, which finally ensured that anyone who suffered harm caused by a competition infringement can effectively claim full compensation and gave…
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Some thoughts on the joint NL-DE-FR paper on Strengthening the DMA and its Enforcement
On 7 September 2021, the Dutch, French, and German governments (the so-called “Friends of an Effective DMA”) published a joint paper focusing on two important aspects of the DMA proposal: (i) future-proofness and tailor-made remediation and (ii) the role of the national authorities. Like the first paper these governments published in May 2021, this is…
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The DMA proposal : Where do things stand ?
The combination of a long week-end and rainy weather in Brussels has allowed me to catch up with my readings on the many papers and reports that have been written in the past few weeks on the DMA proposals by think tanks, academics, lobbyists, companies, and other entities or individuals interested in the topic. It…
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The CMA-ICO’s joint statement on competition and data protection law– A major step forward
It is often thought that data protection policymakers want your personal data to be held within big firms’ walled gardens and shared with no-one, while competition policymakers want big firms to be broken up and your personal data to be freely distributed among firms. Is that right, and if so, what are we going to do…
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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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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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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…