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Marsden/Podszun: Proposals for regulating online platforms

Rupprecht Podszun, one of the directors of the Institute for Competition Law at the Heinrich Heine University, together with the British antitrust expert Philip Marsden, has presented a study on how to regulate digital platforms. The study entitled "Restoring Balance to Digital Competition - Sensible Rules, Effective Enforcement" was commissioned by German think tank Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. It was presented on 30.9.2020 at the European Data Summit in Berlin and discussed with Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt, and Dr. Thorsten Käseberg from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs.

At its core is the question of how digital platforms - such as Google or Facebook - should be regulated in Europe. Marsden and Podszun assume that such regulation is necessary and that there is now consensus on the need to strengthen the rules. They propose three principles and make suggestions for specific ex-ante do's and don'ts for platform operators that go beyond existing legislation (as in the P2B-regulation for instance).

However, Professor Podszun sees enforcement as a crucial step: "How are new rules enforced and by whom? We need to get the institutional design right. That is urgent, and if we manage to have strong institutions, we may well have a breakthrough in our fight for preserving competition and fairness in platform markets”. To this end, the experts propose the establishment of independent market investigations in the EU and a "Platform Compliance Unit" at EU level.

The study is a contribution to the on-going debate on the design of the “New Competition Tool” and the “Digital Services Act”, called for by the Vice President of the European Commission, Margrethe Vestager.

The study (in English) is available here:

https://www.kas.de/de/einzeltitel/-/content/restoring-balance-to-digital-competition

Kategorie/n: Wettbewerb
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