SynthesisThe documents of this Chatham House Rule style round table will be published if and when all speakers and discussants agree to waive the Rule
SYNTHESIS
Frédéric Jenny pointed out that paragraph 178 of the Google Shopping decision did not mention the term "complementary", which means the complementarity between the services offered by a platform. The discussion will focus on the quality, innovation, added value part of the platform economy and ecosystem, and the extent to which regulation of the ecosystem, through the DMA for example, could create trade-offs between the desire to regulate and the risk of limiting innovation. Olivier Guersent pointed out that the DMA was built based on past cases.
In the context of the DMA, various issues arise. The question arises as to whether there are trade-offs between static competition and dynamic competition. Moreover, as the DMA is based on past cases, this leads to the DMA having gaps. This raises the question of whether the relationship between competition within platforms and competition between platforms is properly understood. Most of the cases the Commission must deal with, have been cases dealing with competition between the complementors and the core platforms within the ecosystems and very little have been about how ecosystems compete.
Two sub-issues stand out. The first is the trade-offs that can exist between inter-platform and intra-platform competition. The second concerns the objective of the DMA, namely whether it seeks to promote consumer welfare or fairness in the relationship between central platforms and complementors.