Pierre Régibeau (DG COMP) : Chief Economist – Priorities and cases in times of upheaval

The big “Zeitgeist” discussion when you started off as chief economist was—and continues to be—about antitrust enforcement falling short in its ability to deal with digital platforms in a timely fashion, pre-emptively even, instead of looking back and relying on precedent. I know you had been thinking about exploitation for example, when in private practice and as an academic. Why have we not stretched the existing tools further ? Why could we not do more in terms of exploitation, for example ? Isn’t much of what we worry about with digital platforms their enormously uneven power vis-à-vis those who rely on them ? Isn’t this exploitation ? There is no doubt in my mind that some conduct could be seen as exploitative. Take the example of privacy. From an economic point of view, one aspect of