European Commission’s Vice President Margrethe Vestager in a speech at the ICN annual meeting on May 5 has revealed that the Digital Markets Act will ‘enter into force next spring’. Apple has vehemently opposed the DMA which will make it illegal to restrict which apps users can install on their devices. Additionally, the DMA will force Apple to permit third party payment systems, and make iMessage interoperable.
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With the Digital Markets Act, the Commission might be slightly ahead for now, but we are all heading in the same direction. Already, other major jurisdictions are adopting digital regulation. South Korea recently adopted legislation on app stores. Other jurisdictions are considering new digital regulations. And here in Europe, Germany adopted its own digital regulation last year.
The speed at which the debate has shifted from whether there are antitrust cases at all to full blown regulation is quite extraordinary. And the global agreement on the issues raised by large digital platforms is also extraordinary. This debate is no longer a hot topic amongst competition practitioners but it has strong political attention. And things are moving fast.
We reached the political agreement on the DMA just a few weeks ago. The architecture of the DMA is designed around central enforcement at EU level, with designated gatekeepers subject to certain do’s and don’ts. This makes sense, because we are dealing with only a limited number of companies, which are by definition active on a European scale. The DMA will enter into force next spring and we are getting ready for enforcement as soon as the first notifications come in.
This next chapter is exciting. It means a lot of concrete preparations. It’s about setting up new structures within the Commission, pooling resources from DG Comp and Cnect based on relevant experience. It’s about hiring staff. It’s about preparing the IT systems. It’s about drafting further legal texts on procedures or notification forms. Our teams are currently busy with all these preparations and we’re aiming to come forward with the new structures very soon.
