Digital Competition Law in Europe provides concise and comprehensive coverage of the enforcement practices and policies in the field of digital competition law of six European competition authorities. The competition law landscape is changing rapidly under pressure of the development of artificial intelligence and other digital technologies. ‘Digital competition’, a term and concept that has risen to the forefront of competition law, may be viewed as both promising and cautionary. On the one hand, it brings the promises of increased speed, efficiency and objectivity, and, on the other, it entails potential pitfalls such as hard-to-identify pathways to unfair pricing, dominant positions and their potential abuse, restriction of choice and abuse of personal data. Accordingly, jurisdictions around the world are taking measures to deal with this phenomenon. In this concise but thoroughly researched book – both informative and practical – lawyers from a prominent firm with a specialised digital competition team take stock and examine the state of digital competition in the enforcement practices of six competition authorities in Europe.

What’s in this book:

The competition authorities surveyed are those of the European Union, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. For each, an overview, spanning the period from 2012 to mid-2019, includes not only landmark cases in which digital technologies have had a significant impact on the competition law outcome but also guidance documents such as speeches, policy statements, industry surveys and research reports. Activities and enforcement practices of the various authorities include the following and more:

• degree of the activity;
  
  focus of the activity;
  
  enforcement styles;
  
  enforcement instruments;
  
  visible effectiveness of enforcement; and
  
  important insights and outlooks.

Each overview contains separate chapters on the cartel prohibition, the prohibition of abuse of a dominant position and merger control. An additional chapter evaluates the similarities and differences in the enforcement practices and the positive and negative effects of digital competition in the jurisdictions investigated, and a concluding chapter identifies the major pitfalls and offers recommendations to remedy these.

How this will help you:

As an indispensable guide providing a unique, broad and diverse insight into the past, current and future developments in European digital competition law, this matchless volume is a must-read for any practitioner or academic who encounters competition law related to digital markets. The dilemmas and challenges of the new competition law reality – which is here already, like it or not – are clearly explained for the benefit of regulators, academics, policymakers, judges, in-house counsel and lawyers specialising or having an interest in competition law.