Abuse of Dominance and Digital Markets Act (cepInput)
Tech giants like Google, Amazon or Facebook dominate the global internet market. Competition law is not enough to prevent abuse of power. The Commission therefore presented the Digital Markets Act (DMA) last December. The law is intended to prevent operators of large internet platforms from restricting competition or imposing unfair conditions.
cepInput
The Centrum für Europäische Politik (cep) has examined the act and its relationship to EU competition law in a cepInput. The main point of criticism: "In case of infringements, companies are threatened with double prosecution and double punishment through the application of the DMA and EU competition law. This is prohibited by principle and thus violates Article 50 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights," says cep lawyer Lukas Harta, who wrote the study.
"The European Court of Justice (ECJ), in view of its previous case law, will presumably consider double prosecution permissible. This should be rejected. The ECJ should abandon its previous line of case law," the cep expert demands.
According to Harta, at least double punishment is inadmissible according to the ECJ: "The Commission should follow the ECJ, not allow double punishment and the Parliament should adapt the draft law accordingly."
According to the Commission's current draft law, bigtech companies could face fines of up to 10 per cent of their annual turnover and thus billions of euros in fines for violations of the DMA.
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