EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS

EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS 2022

Prague, Czechia

The Importance of Competition Policy for European “Digital (End) Consumers” in a Digitalized Society Aleš Musil Charles University

Faculty of Law, Department of European Law náměstí Curieových 901/7, Prague, 116 40 Czechia e-mail: Ales.Musil@ec.europa.eu

Abstract The major elements of the paper consist of finding answers on following questions: Why is competition policy important for the European consumers regardless of whether it is the digital world or not? What are the threats to competition in the digital economy and how are digital (end) consumers affected? What are the European Commission and national competition authorities doing to defend competition and consumers in the digital world? Following the first part, examples of recent cases are given, including ongoing investigations in the Apple cases, Facebook, Amazon, and several Google cases. The final part of the paper is dedicated to the regulatory role, namely of future Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA), for competition enforcement. Keywords: European consumers. Competition policy. The Digital Markets Act (DMA). The Digital Services Act (DSA). JEL Classification: K210 1. Introduction The term “consumer” has played an important role since the creation of the European Economic Community in 1957. From the beginning, the founding Treaties contained two different approaches to the concept of ‘consumer’. The first one can be read as a combination of a consumer as an economic unit in the form of aggregated consumer welfare combined with an individual or final (end) consumer approach. The other as a pure end consumer approach. The first definition is enshrined in today’s Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which provide the European “constitutional” basis for the enforcement of European competition law. The second definition is incorporated in the TFEU in the section dealing with the protection of (end) consumers. Article 12 TFEU provides that consumer protection requirements must be taken into account when defining and

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