We are delighted to invite you to event which will be held on Monday, 25th of January 2021 at 17.00.
The event will consist of an evening of discussion on how to preserve innovation and competition in the EU digital economy with special regard to the recent release of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) with our distinguished speakers:
- Ms Deirdre Clune MEP (EPP/IR);
- Mr Alex Agius Saliba MEP (S&D/MT);
- Mr Martijn Snoep, Chairman, Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM);
- Professor Nicolas Petit, Competition Law, European University Institute (EUI);
- Mr Kayvan Hazemi-Jebelli, Competition Counsel, Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA).
The event will be moderated by Aoife White, Journalist, Bloomberg.
This is a public event, hence the Chatham House Rule will not apply.
Given the current developments regarding the Covid-19 outbreak, this event will be held in streaming.
This event is organised in collaboration with CCIA.
About the debate
The European Commission’s newly released Digital Markets Act (DMA) is poised to overhaul the EU single market and contribute to making “Europe fit for the digital age” by addressing questions around the fairness of platforms’ relationships with their business users and the contestability of online platform environments.
This approach to regulation of the platform economy has been considered significant, not only because of the scale of the possible impacts on both the European and the global digital sector, but also because of the scope of the proposed legislation. Traditional competition policy objectives of “efficiency” and “consumer welfare” have been replaced with “fairness” and “contestability” for a range of digital services including marketplaces, app stores and social networks, as well as online search engines, operating systems and cloud services.
The DMA aims at shaping the European digital single market by targeting significant and entrenched operators of “a core platform service which serves as an important gateway for business users to reach end users”. Market significance and entrenched and durable positions are defined through quantitative criteria, such as size or revenues, supplemented by case-by-case qualitative assessment.
The matter of how to preserve competition in digitally enabled markets is still relatively new. How to strike the right balance between ex-ante regulation and open competition, as well as how to achieve the intended effects – and to avoid unintended side-effects – of regulations in the digital world is featuring high in the current EU public policy debate. Indeed, the questions arising from network-based and fast-evolving markets of the digital and platform economy have come at a tipping point which several observers predict will imply a long global process of scrutiny, discussion and adaption.
The question hence is: “How to preserve innovation and competition in the EU digital economy?”
The event will commence at 5.00 pm and it will be held in streaming.
The audience will be able to ask questions during both the discussion and the Q&A session through sli.do #DigitalInnovation
Please specify, whenever possible, to which speaker you wish to address the question. Questions without this specification will be intended as to be addressed to the panel as a whole.
