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Working Lunch with Visiting Fellow Gentjan Skara about the EU´s digital policy
Gentjan Skara gave a presentation titled "Adapting the Competition Policy for the Digital Age: Assessing The EU’s Approach" during a working lunch held on 25 October 2023. The event was organised by the Institute for European Global Studies.
Gentjan’s presentation focused on the EU competition rules and how they tackle the presence of large online platforms that enjoy a strong economic position in the market. He commenced with an overview of competition law in general and noted that it has advanced phenomenally in the last 30 years with about 130 competition systems found globally. He stated that while the provisions of these systems are focused on competition, their characterisation of competition is varied.
More than 10,000 online platforms operating within the EU’s internal market present a challenge to the existing rules, Gentjan argued. Despite the large number of these online platforms, only a few of them such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Airbnb and Microsoft (GAFAM) capture the prime share of the overall generated value. As a result of providing core platform services and thus being designated as ‘gatekeepers’, they pose a threat against economically dependent business users and consumers. In order to address this emerging risk, Gentjan stated that the EU adopted Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 which is commonly referred to as the Digital Market Act (DMA) which is aimed at promoting effective competition in digital markets by creating a fair and contestable online platform environment. The DMA achieves this by prescribing how these gatekeepers should behave in their daily operations by providing them with obligations and prohibitions.
Unlike the enforcement of EU competition law in general, which is shared between the EU Commission and the national competition authorities, Gentjan highlighted that the enforcement of the DMA is placed solely in the hands of the EU Commission. The Commission investigates cases of abuse and can impose fines in cases of infringement of the DMA.
He concluded by stating that the DMA is an important piece of legislation that has the potential to change the business model of big tech companies and has already had an impact on the competition rules of other jurisdictions.
Gentjan (Genti) Skara is a lecturer of EU Law and Competition Law at the Department of Law, Bedër University College, Albania. He is currently a Katekisama Visiting Fellow at the Institute for European Global Studies, where he is working on a project titled “The Enforcement of Digital Markets Act and its Compliance with Competition Law”.