Digital Markets Act: Prof. Podszun in the EU Parliament

What rules do the digital gatekeepers need? The European Commission proposed a "Digital Markets Act" in December 2020. This is now being discussed by the European Parliament and the governments. Prof. Dr. Rupprecht Podszun, Director of the Institute for Competition Law at Heinrich Heine University, was invited to a meeting of the Internal Market Committee of the EU Parliament to discuss the Digital Markets Act with MEPs. Professor Podszun was one of six experts from academia invited by rapporteur Dr Andreas Schwab.

"The Digital Markets Act is an important step in the right direction. We have not managed to create a meaningful regulatory framework for the digital economy on the basis of antitrust law alone. That is why it is important to follow up now and tame the digital gatekeepers," says Rupprecht Podszun. Together with the researchers Philipp Bongartz and Sarah Langenstein he wrote a policy paper with suggestions on how to improve the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The paper is available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3788571.

"It is important to us that the principles of regulation become clearer. Gatekeepers must be required to protect the contestability of markets, the fairness of their intermediation services and the autonomy of users. In addition, enforcement of the obligations under the DMA still needs to be improved. We propose to involve national authorities and to provide for a body independent of the EU Commission, the Platform Complaints Panel. Then companies and user associations can better assert their interests." It is expected that the consultations on the DMA will take the whole year.