The recent Google Shopping ruling has already sparked much debate, and an earlier blog post offers a detailed overview of the judgment itself. Building on this, this contribution’s focus is to emphasize and discuss some aspects in the academic analysis, the judgment’s broader implications and outlook for further actions. It builds upon a recently published…

Key message The discretion afforded to the European Commission (‘EC’) is of central importance with regard to the implementation and enforcement of the Digital Markets Act (‘DMA’). If viewed as arbitrariness, particularly in view of a normative framework that arguably permits such a perspective, the European Commission’s decisions may potentially jeopardise the rule of law…

After years of planning and debate, the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition, and Consumers Act will come into force on 1 January 2025. This landmark legislation provides expanded powers to the CMA in respect of merger control, digital markets, competition and consumer protection.   The DMCC The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCC) is the final…

By most indicators, the Generative AI or GenAI ecosystem is a dynamic and competitive space. GenAI is estimated to generate $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion in value for the global economy. There has been a substantial influx of venture capital investments backing innovative start-ups. Since ChatGPT launched in 2022, there are now more than 310 large…

A new kid may join the digital tech regulation block. On 2 December, the Australian Treasure proposed a new digital competition regime addressing digital market power. The policy of the Australian legislator and enforcer builds on its long-term digital strategy, triggered in 2017. For more than seven years now, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission…

The Digital Markets Act (DMA)’s provisions started to apply on 2 May 2023. Since then, undertakings have been forced to check whether they met the quantitative thresholds. If that was the case, the DMA compelled them to notify their potential gatekeeper status to the European Commission. The first wave of designation decisions relating to six gatekeepers…

Deployment of systems of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become mainstream and popular with small and large economic operators. One of the most raging developments includes services relying on natural language processing (NLP) taking the form of chatbots. In a previous blog post, I explored the opportunities the Digital Markets Act (DMA) provides the regulator to…

While core competition law enforcement has been going on for a while, the enforcement of the adjacent digital regulation is just beginning. The conference “Tools for Better Enforcement of EU Law in the Digital Space” dealt with such problems and took place on November 7 and 8, 2024 at the European Legal Studies Institute (ELSI)…

Introduction The decision of the ECJ of 10th of September 2024 (C-48/22 P) brings the Google Shopping saga to an end. The decision by the highest court confirms the conviction of Alphabet by the General Court (T-612/17) (see the blogpost on General Court’s decision here). The European Commission had previously imposed a record fine of…

As the DMA’s enforcement is in full swing, the complexities of its specific provisions and questions regarding their interpretation are beginning to surface. On 25 March 2024, the European Commission launched formal proceedings to investigate Meta’s ‘pay-or-consent’ model, introduced in November 2023 for Facebook and Instagram, sparking a significant discussion on the interpretation of Article…