Katherine Kirrage’s Post

#DMADDAY approaching! Below a quick bite on what this entails from our international Competition, Antitrust & Trade team. #DigitalMarketsAct #DigitalEconomy #DigitalRegulation

In need of a quick update on the Digital Markets Act?

⚠ Deadline looming! The DMA seeks to promote fair competition, innovation, and consumer choice. Designated Gatekeepers have until 7 March to comply. The global implications are significant, both for the digital economy and for international cooperation. ❓ So who is affected and how does it apply? 👉 Flick through to get the insight   At Osborne Clarke, our experts in the digital economy are ready to help you understand these regulatory challenges. Reach out to our experts >> | Roderick Nieuwmeyer (Belgium and The Netherlands) | Dr. Sebastian Hack, LL.M. (London), Thomas G. Funke and Manuel Schuster, LL.B., LL.M. (Germany) | Thibaut Marcerou (France) | Enrico Fabrizi and Fabrizio Ducci (Italy | José Ramón Medina García and Luis Castro (Spain) | Katherine Kirrage and Lucy Elliot (UK, DMCCB) | Raphael Brochier (Belgium) #DMA #DigitalMarketsAct #DigitalEconomy #Innovation #EULaw

As expected the DMA was a hot topic during the morning sessions of the Annual Charles River Associates Brussels Conference 2023. A few key takeaways: ➡ Spontaneous compliance: the hope among regulators appears to be that the DMA leads to "spontaneous compliance" among gatekeepers as compared with antitrust which leads to a "wait and see" approach (i.e., dominant companies wait until a complaint is issued to consider whether to adjust behaviour). However, it is an open question as to whether "spontaneous compliance" will materialise. ➡ Third-party views: input from business users will be key to alerting both the European Commission and NCAs to the (in)effectiveness of compliance. To that end, the ECN will organise a stakeholder conference for business users to extol the benefits and possibilities that the DMA can provide. ➡ EU vs. UK: comparing the approaches of the EU and the UK to digital regulation, the view was that the EU has prioritised "clarity and workability" developing a set of obligations that are "easily enforced". The UK has taken a more flexible and nuanced approach, potentially at the expense of time and resources required for implementation. ➡ Behavioural economics & choice architecture: Behavioural economics should play a significant role in developing and demonstrating compliance for the obligations relating to default settings, easy switching and self-preferencing. The DMA will only be effective if choices are presented to consumers in a suitable way. #BrusselsConference_CRA #DigitalMarketsAct #competition

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced the appointment of three senior directors as it gears up for its expanded role under the new digital markets competition regime, including Cat Batchelor, Tania Van den Brande (formerly at Ofcom), and Euan MacMillan. This comes in the wake of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act, passed in May of this year... #antitrust #digitalmarkets #competitionlaw #techREG #consumers

If you have not yet made it through the 188 pages of the Competition and Markets Authority's Guidance on the Digital Markets Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (or the 452 pages of the Act itself) then never fear - grab a coffee and you can watch (or just listen) to our discussion on some of the main features of the new regime. Many thanks to Oles Andriychuk and the Digital Markets Research Hub for the invitation, and to my panelists Lara Dimitrova Stoimenova and Max von Thun-Hohenstein Yoshioka for their excellent contributions. #DMCCA #digitalmarkets #coffeebreakcontent ********************************************************************** The UK has finally adopted its long-awaited legislation establishing a new pro-competition regime for digital markets. To discuss the main features of the Digital Markets Competition and Consumers Act we organised a panel ( 📹 https://lnkd.in/e-su58-9) with three remarkable participants. Lara Dimitrova Stoimenova – Managing Director of Sigma Economics (ex-Ofcom & CMA) Sarah Long – Partner at Euclid Law Firm Max von Thun-Hohenstein Yoshioka - Director of Europe & Transatlantic Partnerships at the Open Markets Institute Among the topics receiving attention of the speakers are the following: ✔ Open-endedness of goals: bug or feature? ✔ Comparing legislative processes in the EU (the DMA) & the UK (the DMCCA) ✔ The CMA consultation on new digital markets competition guidance ✔ Is the requirement of having so many mandatory consultations good or bad for a new regime? ✔ What potential implications should the CMA be mindful of when consulting on the new guidance bearing in mind the life of Art 102 Guidance Paper ✔ Formally, unlike the DMA, the DMCCA is not a new start but a continuation of competition policy: implications ✔ The elegance of the formula "the CMA [...] will apply this guidance flexibly and may depart from the approach described where there is an appropriate and reasonable justification for doing so" ✔ The level of judicial scrutiny and the role of judicial authorities in the new architecture. ✔ Discussing (the relationship between the) two autonomous procedures: "Conduct Requirements" & "Pro-Competition Interventions" ✔ Changes in merger control ✔ Final offer mechanism (DMCCA) vs. FRAND terms (DMA) ✔ Recommendations to students New video 🎬 https://lnkd.in/e-su58-9

🔎 In our latest publication on the Digital Markets Act, Academic Director Alexandre de Streel discusses the substantive and procedural principles which play a role in #DMA implementation.   🗝 These principles are derived from the theory of good regulation and good regulatory practices in liberal democracies.   🗝 Both #gatekeepers and the European Commission should feed these principles into DMA implementation, as they will strongly influence the outcome. 📖 Read the chapter now in our recently published book on "Implementing the DMA: Substantive and Procedural Principles" https://lnkd.in/ehZhkgjg   The book also features CERRE academics Marc Bourreau Richard Feasey Amelia Fletcher Jan Krämer and Giorgio Monti.   ▶ Want to hear more? Take a look at the recording of the Digital Platforms Summit, where our academics discuss their research with gatekeepers, third parties, civil society, national regulators and the Commission: https://lnkd.in/eF4M4W_e

SAVE THE DATE | ECN Digital Markets Act conference: "Empowering business models"   🗓 24 June 2024 📍 Sheraton, Amsterdam   All eyes on the European Competition Network (ECN). The European Commission, national competition authorities and digital companies from EU Member States will meet in Amsterdam to discuss the Digital Markets Act.   💬 The Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, and the Chairman of the The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets, Martijn Snoep, among many other international experts on Competition and representatives from digital SMEs, will take part in the conference. 🔸 Some large online platforms act as "gatekeepers" in digital markets. The Digital Markets Act aims to ensure that these platforms behave in a fair way online. 📃 Access, interoperability and consumer preferences will be the main topics on the agenda.   Stay tuned! More information will be launched soon. #CNMC #ECN #EuropeanCompetitionNetwork #DMA #DigitalMarketsAct #SaveTheDate

We’ll be honest, we thought a session about regulation might be a bit boring. In fact it was anything but. As Paul Goode highlighted, multipolar traps emerge when self-interests conflict with collective well-being. His past digital optimism has evolved into an uneasiness, as competitive digital media players fight to keep up with each other, pursuing continuous growth, possibly to society’s detriment. To break free, we need to cooperate collectively with regulators, practitioners and trade bodies, to prioritize collaboration, long-term thinking, and shared goals, working across sectors and nations. Meanwhile, as Alexander Whalen, CIPP-E and Achim Schlosser highlighted, determining EU policies based on a dogmatic insistence that tech is bad and needs more and more regulation can also be unhelpful. Layering complex and unwieldy laws on top of each other simply confuses things. We need consideration of what consumers actually want, an understanding that measurement isn’t always bad and greater use of evidence to define and address societal harm where individual players can’t or won’t self-regulate. Heavy, but important stuff. 🤔 IAB Europe IAB Italia

Believe it or not, the team prepared this article before the Authority released its roadmap for 2024 - which is about focusing on exactly these subjects, in the same order: digital, sustainability, purchasing power and overseas territories. Enjoy the read!