Commission Publishes Final Report On Competition Policy For The Digital Era

On 4 April 2019, the European Commission published a special report commissioned by Commissioner Margrethe Vestager on how competition policy should evolve to continue promoting pro-consumer innovation in the digital age ("Competition Policy for the Digital Era").

The report is grounded in three key characteristics of the digital economy which grant significant competitive advantages to incumbents, frustrating competitors' ability to enter the market. First, the extreme returns to scale in the production and delivery of digital services. Second, the existence of network effects which frustrate potential competitors' efforts to make users move to an alternative platform and, finally, the role of data as a crucial input for the provision of online services. In this context, the report focuses on the application of competition rules to platforms and data and on the role of the EU merger control rules in regulating the digital space.