The PIPC Conducts Status Examinations of Five Major Applications, including Super Apps

 Here.

Boiled by Design: Can Europe Still Save Its Digital Frog (and almost everything else)?

Aka "From Digital Feudalism to Digital Sovereignty" - UCL IIPP, blog and video here.

First of all, I strongly recommend watching this discussion — one of the most engaging I’ve followed in recent weeks. Precisely because it brought real tensions to the surface, and there was no neat consensus, it proved especially useful. The participants themselves were almost mythic in stature, truly impressive figures. Among them, an economist of my own generation whom I’ve admired for decades (Mariana Mazzucato); a younger economist, equally stimulating, insightful and 'unorthodox' in her approach (Cecilia Rikap); and a third, also an economist (Francesca Bria), who has done remarkable work also from a legal perspective, I'm thinking especially of her time with the Municipality of Barcelona. The only technologist, and male, on the panel (Mike Bracken) chose his words carefully, and sensibly.

Now, I’d like to offer a few thoughts to set out where, in my view, the key points lie, and how we might frame them in a way that keeps this essential conversation moving in the right direction for the EU and beyond. I won’t begin with the problems, those are already well worn ground for any Wavesblog Reader who isn’t merely passing through. But if you do fall into that latter category, I’d suggest starting with the EuroStack Report itself, if you don't know it already, which came up several times during the panel discussion.

To stack or not to stack - and how? 

Instead, I’ll begin with the blog post that accompanied the release of the panel video, as it already eloquently homes in on one of the underlying frictions. The post frames 'the core disagreement' as one of Ownership vs. Operational Sovereignty, one position being that pushing for digital regulation, something the EU is all too well known for, becomes little more than wishful thinking when the entities being regulated don’t just use infrastructure, but are the infrastructure. And those infrastructures "are controlled somewhere else, built according to laws we didn’t write, and underpinned by values we do not agree with." The opposing view says there’s no need for ownership, no need for democratic sovereignty over the layers of the stack, let alone the stack as a whole, As long as the right regulation is in place. That means building in the right regulatory safeguards: mandated interoperability, switching, portability, all the things we know sit also at the heart of the EU Digital Markets Act. The more radical version of the first position, as I see it, came from Bria. She was clear: yes, she’s spent at least part of her life pushing for the need of more, better digital regulation, but that’s no longer enough. We’re in a different phase now. It’s time to move beyond and, among other things, build. The second position was put forward by Bracken, drawing on his previous experience working for the UK government and his current work advising many more. His was a vision that includes leveraging on the (very) few digital public infrastructures we already have, with a nod to Brazil’s Pix system, which has recently attracted attention also from the Trump administration. 

Then things got a little tense, and a touch tangled, when, at one point, the technologist referred to one of the women economists on the panel (it wasn’t quite clear which) as a Marxist. Judging by the subdued tone, I wouldn’t say it was meant as a compliment — more of an observation, perhaps. And, to further clarify his position, he added that he absolutely doesn’t buy into the idea of ownership over the stack. In his experience, the only place he’s ever seen it done is, you guessed it, China. Turning to the one tool that, in Biden’s words (remember?), keeps capitalism from becoming theft, namely, competition, Bracken argued that platforms should indeed be broken up. But his main point was this: industries work because there are standards (protocols!) — and when standards (technological and beyond) are in place, everything more or less falls into line. I didn’t quite share Bria's reaction, but yes, it did strike me as rather simplistic. From a legal and economic perspective, we know perfectly well that standards help things run, but they’re far from enough. Good functioning markets, where consumers, business users,  and firms can confidently act and thrive, need a great deal more. So much more, in fact, that at times you can’t help but wonder whether the effort is really worth the candle. But the truth is, there aren’t many alternatives. So far, we haven’t managed to come up with anything better. So, do we stick with them, bolstered, for now, by a healthy dose of market engineering? 

Rikap offered a perspective I wouldn’t place between the two, that would only flatten it. What she brought in terms of analysis was unmistakably ecosystemic. Her question cut through: which layers of the digital stack are chokepoints, offer a panopticon view of the economy and our live (i.e., everything happens on the cloud)s, and set the rules of distribution and production? Bingo: cloud services. Is it then a good idea to build an entire nation’s ID system on top of the cloud infrastructure controlled by Big Tech? Hardly. What struck me most, though, was when she spoke of complicity, naming names, such as Mistral and SAP. If we’re really in a phase where digital sovereignty is on everyone’s mind, where we’re all on edge about who holds the power, then the real question is: do we just carry on with capitalism-as-usual-only-worse? Or is it finally time to right the ship — and not just with a gentle nudge, but with a meaningful course correction? 

Right after that, Rikap brings us back to a fascinating thread running through her research work. It’s not just about who produces knowledge, innovation — but about who ends up appropriating it. In a cascade from bad to worse, knowledge appropriated by those few isn’t being used to solve fundamental problems, take climate change, for instance. Quite the opposite: it often ends up making climate emergencies worse (think data centres). Nor we as a society might end up in great shape when it comes to producing new knowledge, regardless of who ends up capturing it. From Rikap’s perspective, we’re in epistemic trouble if we start tackling every problem, science included, with AI-based solutions alone, without even asking ourselves whether that kind of AI is the one we want. So where does that leave us? Until now, we heard of two paths: the EuroStack vision (Bria), or the technologically enlightened toolkit of interoperability, open standards, switching tools, regulatory safeguards, etc (Bracken). And Rikap? Bold. A "public-led, democratic, international, people cantered, and ecological stack or value chain" is the way to go. One positive aspect is that the question of demand is addressed from the outset. Yes, the whole system may is not only public-led: demand is also shaped by the state. And unsurprisingly, much of it should come from areas like healthcare and education, at least at the beginning. And here she turns to encouraging examples that stretch beyond Europe’s borders. Curiously, she brings up the Meta case in Nigeria, which I’ve briefly written about myself. She presents it as a situation in which Nigeria appeared willing to bear Meta’s market exit in order to enforce its digital regulation, if I understood correctly.  I’ll need to think more about it myself.

Are these three visions irreconcilable? Certainly not. What's the most promising vantage point from which to start turning any of this into reality and saving the frog? What do we already have that can be used/repurposed/reused? And where, instead, will we need to overcome inertia/opposition and do something fundamentally different? On the latter, today we had one of those precious exchanges on BlueSky that still make you believe in net humanity and serendipity. Or way I just chatting with bots?  

/END.

The Algorithmic Hand: How Large Language Models Disrupt Competition and Democracy

 A. Küsters, here.

noyb's Pay or Okay report: how companies make you pay for privacy

 Here.

Commission presents template for General-Purpose AI model providers to summarise the data used to train their model *mandatory* mind you

 EC, here. 

Italy takes Meta, X and LinkedIn to court over unpaid tax

 TechCentral.ie, here. 

Trump Weighed Nvidia Breakup But Was Told It Would Be ‘Hard’

 Bloomberg, here. 

Digital Markets Act: Civil society calls for investigation into Alphabet’s non-compliance

 Article 19 et al., here. 

Activating the full DMA's potential (Episode XX, still only scratching the surface): 

"Article 27
Information by third parties
1. Any third party, including business users, competitors or end-users of the core platform services listed in the designation decision pursuant to Article 3(9), as well as their representatives, may inform the national competent authority of the Member State, enforcing the rules referred to in Article 1(6), or the Commission directly, about any practice or behaviour by gatekeepers that falls within the scope of this Regulation."

But (and this is one of the issues with the DMA, not the it wasn't mentioned during the negotiations):

"2. The...Commission shall have full discretion as regards the appropriate measures and are under no obligation to follow-up on the information received" 

 

Daseinsvorsorge in der Plattformökonomie

 Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, hier.

How big tech is force-feeding us AI

 Blood in the Machine, here.

YOUR STRENGTH IS YOUR AGGREGATE GDP × YOUR MOTIVATION TO STAY UNIFIED": JOANNA BRYSON ON AI, REGULATION, AND GLOBAL COOPERATION

 GulanMedia, here.

Unpacking Trump’s AI Action Plan [Everything You Expected, Just a Bit Worse]

 

TechPolicy, here.

Contextualizing ancient texts with generative neural networks

 Nature, here.

Has Brazil Invented the Future of Money?

 P. Krugman, here.

[In 2017 (!)  I had the honour of talking about fintech, competition, and the PSD2 to a Brazilian audience - people were genuinely interested in what the EU was doing; now they have outdone us - good for them! Why hasn't the EU achieved more? I've plenty of biased opinions!]

Martijn Snoep: Antitrust & Industrial Policy. Independence or Coordination. Champions. Latest Cases

Tools available to make markets work 

Chez Oles, here. 

Impressive, brave interview. 

 I'm perhaps a bit more positive about the long term impact of the DMA: it's going to evolve (that was the legislators' will), it creates new, important rights for end users and business users, and it is already influencing competition policy in a positive way. But it was never supposed to act in isolation (again, as foreseen by the legislators - see e.g. the HLG). Plenty of potential in many directions...

 

 

Listening to how the ACM has come to see itself as "market designer," I was reminded of this 2017 "no AI" generated image I used at a conference in Brazil (found back by chance while writing this).

UK Regulator Flags Apple’s iOS Browser Engine Ban in Draft SMS Designation

 OWA, here.

Epic Games blasts ‘weak’ plan to break Apple, Google mobile grip

 Developer-Tech, here.

Get DMA Enforcement Back on Track: Our Message to the IMCO Working Group

 Neutralsearch.eu, here.

For a Strategic, European and Competition-Oriented Industrial Policy

 T. Duso et al., here.

The Relationship Between Competition Policy and Industrial Policy in an Era of Structural Change

D. Coyle, here. 

IA : la CNIL finalise ses recommandations sur le développement des systèmes d’IA et annonce ses futurs travaux

 Ici.

Europe Can Build Its Own Social Media

 S. Vogelsang, here.

CMA proposes next steps for improving mobile platforms in the UK

 Here. 

FREEDOM FOR FACTS: For true freedom of expression on online platforms!

Here.

Towards a new ‘agile competition law’ paradigm

 I. Lianos, here.

Best cuisines in the world united to enforce their local DMAs ;-)

F. Chirico from LinkedIn, here.  

PayPal taps wallets from China and India to make cross-border payments easier for 2 billion people

 TechCrunch, here.

[Paypal creating a privately owned infrastructure for cross-border payments?]

Real innovation happens when companies have to compete on merit, not on who can kiss the leader’s ass most effectively

 TechDirt, here.

[Invited by the OECD to speak on competition and innovation, I only wish I’d presented my research findings just as effectively]

Nerd Reich: why tech billionaires want a ‘corporate dictatorship’

 

Decoder, here. 

[What can a humble researcher, middle-aged woman and Italian on top of that, possibly do against what is already a serious threat to our precious democracy in the name of *tech and innovation*? Nothing, I'm afraid. But I'll keep frantically blogging, also a bit outside Wavesblog's traditional core topics - since October 2007, at least until Google starts censoring us here on Blogger ;-)]

The Sound of Reduced Competition? Music, Data, and the UMG/Downtown Merger

Not the usual Competition Commissioner's statement.
Whole-of-Commission Approach? 

EC, here. 

[Dutch company buying an US company, mind you. At any rate, it sounds lkve a no brainer theory of harm]

Amazon to acquire Bee AI wearable that hears every word you say: what could possibly go wrong?

 

BUT we have the DMA

Digit.in, here.

Imagine...we still had competition cops on the beat.

Stating the obvious: Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results

 

Pew Research Center, here. 

South Korea considering "exceptions to exclude app market fees from Google and Apple to minimize concerns over trade friction"

 

Chosun, here. 

South Korea: Local DMA Bill "likely to be put on hold due to pressure from the TRUMP administration"

 S. Lee (from LinkedIn), here. 

"Discovered" by a researcher coming back from vacation? Don't they have civil society active in digital in South Korea?  

Trump Goes to Bat for Big Tech in Global Trade Talks

 

WSJ, here. 

[South Korea - local DMA dropped already? Cautious to say the least.  Brazil - everything you want to know about their draft DMA and "electronic payment practices" aka Fab Pix here].

[I wonder how Brazilians would react if Trump successfully undermined their highly efficient sovereign digital infrastructure for electronic payments].  

The fabulous Destiny of OpenAI in the UK: Royal Tour from CMA to No.10

 Reuters, here. 

Monopoly Round-Up: The Incredible Shrinking Trump Antitrust Enforcers

 M. Stoller, here.

After Pledging to Keep Prices Low, Amazon Hiked Them on Hundreds of Essentials

 

Weddings in Venice are notoriously expensive

   WSJ, here.

Figma looks to raise nearly $1 billion as it kicks off its IPO roadshow

 

TechCrunch, here. 

The abandoned Adobe/Figma merger? Hats off to the CMA. It deserves a pat on the back, not a muzzle.

Does Using In-Copyright Works as Training Data Infringe?

 P. Samuelson, here.

Deregulation Swings the Pendulum Toward Financial Crash

 The Prospect, here.

The Case for Europe’s Backing of Digital Civil Society Groups

 M. Scott, here.

X slams French criminal probe over alleged algorithm ‘manipulation’

 FT, here.

From Digital Feudalism to Digital Sovereignty

 UCL IIPP, bog and video here.

"here’s the tension: for Bria, we may already be past that point. In her view, interoperability without control is an illusion...The Bria–Bracken disagreement isn’t just academic. It reflects the real policy dilemmas facing governments today" essential discussion, listening to it again soon. 

From economy of occupation to economy of genocide

 F. Albanese, here.

CPDP LatAm 2025

Day 1  Here and aquí

Day 2 here. and aquí

Commission issues first opinion on the compatibility of a sustainability agreement in the French wine sector with competition rules for agriculture

 EC, here. 

Impact of FTC v Meta with Brendan Benedict

 Podcast, here.

Senate Hearing Debates AI Training on Copyrighted Works

 Publishersweekly, here.

TBH, I've been appalled seeing how publishers fought against copyright exceptions for blind people at the WIPO and mistrusted their lobbying since (disclosure: I was representing the Italian Library Association in the negotiations), but this time they are right :-). 

Microsoft kann US-Zugriff auf EU-Cloud nicht verhindern - egal was Brad Smith erzählt...

 Golem, hier.

EU Merger Control – Revolution or Reset?

Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, here.

AI Age: no more copyright protection for anyone

 D. Baldacci, here.

Die neuen Facetten des Widerstands (2)

 Orf.at, hier (Max Schrems ab 9:34). 

Tim Cowen: History of Competition Law & Telecommunication Policy

 Chez Oles, here.

How Money and Markets Really Work

 Daily Show, here.

Antitrust 101: Commissioner Mark Meador

 Podcast, here.

Commission sends Statement of Objections to Vivendi for possible breach of EU merger rules by implementing the acquisition of Lagardère before merger approval

 Here.

Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA

 OWA, here.

Is EU consumer law getting ready for the agentic "revolution"?

 Public consultation on the Digital Fairness Act, here.

Wie Booking.com so groß wurde und warum Hotels klagen

Deutschlandfunknova.de, hier. 

Privacy NGO Noyb targets three Chinese apps with data access complaints

 Euractiv, here. 

Competition Law 2.0: Forging A New Paradigm in a Crisis-Driven World

S. Makris and T. Davies, here.

Mexico: Competition Policy Reform

 Aquì.

Behavioural Economics in Competition Enforcement

T. Höppner,  here.

Escape Forward: are we finally making progress? Cristina asks

 

And two seconds later she did block me 😇- nothing personal, ofc.
Just belonging myself to one of those DMA groupies as 
annoying as mosquitos at sunset

Here.

Cory Doctorow was in conversation with Maria Farrell

 Here.

No, gatekeepers cannot hide behind DMA's "specific choice" (read also Meta non-compliance decision)

 ICCLE, here.

DHH rant against Apple

 Lex Friedman, here.

Is the DMA Ready for Agentic AI?

 CERRE, here.

[The DMA was never supposed to work in perfect isolation...And should constantly evolve _ whatever it takes]

America First Antitrust w/ Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Gail Slater

 Video here.

[The name AFA makes me nostalgic even of the Chicago School: same with you?] 

Digital Markets Act Workshops: Key Takeaways from Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple

 M. Kirkwood, here.

Rapportage AI & Algoritmes Nederland

 Dutch DPA, hier.

Updating Merger Control as an Economic Policy Tool for Europe?.

 CEPR, Video here.

What is digital sovereignty and how can Europe achieve it? Ask Robin

 Here. 

Listened to it at least twice - fresh air for Rome's hot summer!

Article 19 market investigation into AI: that woul be nice!

 A. Schwab, here.

REGULATING DIGITAL PLATFORM ECOSYSTEMS THROUGH DATA SHARING AND DATA SILOING: CONSEQUENCES FOR INNOVATION AND WELFARE

 J. Krämer, S. Shekhar, here.

Neue Wege in der wirtschaftsrechtlichen Rechtsdurchsetzung: Der Digital Markets Act

 R. Podszun, here.

Navigating the Strait of Leipzig: 5,000 euros in damages to a Meta's end user for processing personal data on third-party websites

 

From the Strait of Messina, where Scylla and Charybdis lurked, to an imaginary Strait of Leipzig, where a judge has just awarded damages to a Facebook/Instagram (?) user for a GDPR breach that reverberates with much of what was discussed in the marathon post on the DMA Meta 5(2) non-compliance decision (🍎🍏🟠). Not being too put off by the Trockenheit of German legal prose (survived practising and doing research as a young lawyer in Biergärten-full Munich), this ruling is nothing short of thrilling...Why not jotting down a couple of observations? 

You Wavesblog Reader are no longer a Spanish Facebook user but a German user not at all enjoying reading gardening websites (your last Bavarian geraniums died off long ago, with no regrets) but you have an health issue (sorry for that!) and spend a lot of time surfing the Internet and spending time specifically on websites like apotheken.de, shopapotheke. de, docmorris.de, aerzte.de, helios-gesundheit.de, jameda.de (You tried out ChatGPT too but are far from trusting its advice).

Google to Pay $2.4 Billion in Deal to License Tech of Coding Startup, Hire CEO

 WSJ, here. 

Competition authorities are a bit distracted, as of late. Too little of real value or impact has been learned or done. Those who at least tried (Previous CMA, FTC under Lina Khan,  DOJ under Jonathan Kanter) have been muted or removed. But, of course, we can all keep busy writing submissions and/or watching webinars.

Digital Markets Act Enforcement: Impact and next steps: Call for Papers (17 days left, so that you know)

 

 

Here. Of course, economies of scale and scope with the EC's public consultation on the DMA review would be rational!

Equo compenso: decisione sui diritti dovuti da Meta a GEDI

AGCOM,  here.

Revising the DMA Variation-Selection-Adaptation Paper

Time for comments closed! Thank you for your great ones, Wavesblog Readers and beyond! Revising and updating it right now. Peer Reviewers are waiting. 

I was already unofficially asked to make it (much) shorter: Sunday's cutting ✂✄

...

Submitted!

AI for humanity

 

Google not complying with the Turkish CA´s 2021 (!) order regarding self-preferencing

 Here. 

A #saveourholidays letter from some MEPs - but also about meaningful inputs, objectives, communication, civil society's role and means...

 

YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows

 

TechCrunch, here. 

BfDI launches public consultation on AI models

 Here.

Why Big Tech is threatened by a global push for data sovereignty

 Rest of World, here.

After years of discussions: public consultation on Reg. 1/2003

 Here.

§ 19a, DMA usw: Jahresbericht 24/25

 Bundeskartellamt, hier.

Enforce the law: why we need the DMA to be applied without fear or delay

 NextCloud, here.

Upcoming, because you've the right to be presented with the specific choice of an *alternative* podcast ;-) - Wavesblog: surfing the digital economy and its regulation

 Soon. 

Commission provides guidance on the creation of a licensing negotiation group in the automotive sector for the licensing of standard essential patents

 EC, here.

Starting today, Gemini AI will access your WhatsApp and more. Learn how to disable it on Android.

 Tuta, here.

Cloudflare Wades into the Battle Over AI Consent and Compensation

 C. Radsch, here.

AI training exemption saves Meta from DMA data combination penalties

 PCC.land, here. 

Protecting Privacy and Dissent in an Age of Authoritarianism and AI

 TechPolicy Podcast, here. 

Silicon Valley’s Challenge: Antitrust as a Shield for Democracy

 Digi-con, here. 

Our "strategy for online tracking”: Thou shalt be tracked, whatever

 ICO, here. 

AI, Antitrust & Privacy: When More Competition Makes Things Worse

 

M. Stucke, here. 

But, on a remote island off the French Coast...

Inside the Media’s Traffic Apocalypse

 Intelligencer, here.

The real winners of the AI Race

 SOMO, here. 

Rencontre Draghi-Aghion-Coeuré

 Vidéo ici; texte ici.

Results: YouGov survey on public attitudes to Big Tech in France, Germany and Spain

 

What do EU citizens expect?

  Digitalrechte, here.

Imagining the Future of European Digital Infrastructures

 AlgoSoc, here.

Renewing the dynamic of European integration: Single Market Stories by Business Leaders

 ERT, here.

PROFILING BY PROXY HOW META'S DATA DRIVEN ADS FUEL DISCRIMINATION

 ORG, here. 

The Companies Betting They Can Profit From Google Search’s Demise

 WSJ, here. 

Free Lunch Is Over for the AI That Broke the Web

 Gizmodo, here.

Google's Hotseat Hypocrisy

 OWA, here.

So müssen Online-Dienste ihre Datensilos öffnen

 Netzpolitik, hier.

Don't forget what Silicon Valley tried to do

 Blood in the machine, here.

Meta’s Second DMA Compliance Workshop: A Half-an-Egg Omelette

 A. Ribera Martinez, here.

Musk, Bezos, Thiel - Die Macht der Tech-Milliardäre

 Phoenix Runde, hier.

Why Cloudflare wants AI companies to pay for content

 TechCrunch, here. 

Great, but shouldn't it be a democratic decision taken by a legislator and not by an infrastructure ("gatekeeper")? Not just "tech is law" - get over it? 

Targeted advertising by Meta democratised advertising and made people love ads (so we heard): discuss

 Meta DMA enforcement/compliance workshop, video here.

Datenschutz im KI-Zeitalter: Warum das Urteil zu Meta ein Weckruf sein muss

 t3n, hier.

AI: is there a future for competition - and which one - at all? [My title, not CERRE's]

CERRE, Video here. 

Draft Report on the 28th Regime

 Here.

Consultation on the first review of the Digital Markets Act

 EC, here.

Buy side vs Sell side vs Regulatory side

 Monopoly Report, Podcast here.

British Browser Boiz in Brussels! Fun at Microsoft’s DMA compliance meeting

 B. Lawson, here.

Beyond AI & Copyright funding a sustainable information ecosystem

 Open Future, here.

America must not defang Europe’s new tech law

 L. Lowe, here and here. 

And the EC has once again confirmed that it won't, here and here.

ACM market investigation into computer-controlled consumer prices in the airline sector: research methods and consultation

 PR, here. 

UK Announces Proposed Measures in Google Investigation

 M. Kirkwood, here. 

The Technical Feasibility of Divesting Google Chrome

 KGI, here. 

ByteDance Compliance/Enforcement DMA Workshop: "Just" technical questions - engineers couldn't make it, sorry!

 

How Monopolies Secretly Steal Your Freedom

 Brought to you by the inimitable Lina Khan, here (may I please live long enough to see a Khan US Presidency, or two?). 

Alphabet’s Second DMA Compliance Workshop: A Self-Reported Engaged Gatekeeper

 A. Ribera Martinez, here. 

Recording here.

Privacy-focused app maker Proton sues Apple over alleged anticompetitive practices and fees

 TechCrunch, here. 

Senators Reject 10-Year Ban on State-Level AI Regulation, In Blow to Big Tech

 Time, here. 

Dear Ursula, ensuring GPAI Rules Serve the Interests of European Businesses and Citizens

 Letter here. 

Brasil, rumo ao ("DMA") gol!

It was a real pleasure yesterday to share some reflections on the European experience with the Digital Markets Act across the Atlantic. You can watch the recording here.

We spoke candidly: about what seems to be working, about what remains difficult, and about what, in hindsight, might have been done differently. These are not easy conversations, but they are necessary ones.

What stood out, above all, was the seriousness and clarity of purpose shown by our Brazilian counterparts. There’s no doubt: they are approaching the challenge of platform regulation with a level of determination that is both impressive and encouraging. It’s not just about legal design or enforcement mechanics: it’s about political will. And in Brazil, that will is clearly there. 

This isn’t Brazil against Europe (or Italy ;-)): it’s one match, one team.
And the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Damien Geradin: Maintaining Competition in Digital Markets: The Role of Public & Private Enforcement

Chez Oles, here.  

Apple’s Second DMA Compliance Workshop: An Aggressive Defence of Rights

 A. Ribera Martinez, here. 

Recording of the workshop here. Watching it soon!

US v Apple - holding its ground

 here.

How Big Tech turns knowledge into power

 C.Rikap, here.

Bridging Internet & AI Governance: From Theory to Practice

 IGF 2025, here.

Interoperability in Digital Platforms and its Regulation: Transatlantic Dialogue alive and kicking!

Not a dead parrot.

Webinar, 1 July, 15-17 CET. Register here if you want to pose questions, otherwise live on YouTube here. Recording here.

This webinar is a transatlantic conversation bringing together researchers, regulators and civil society. The focus is on interoperability, not as a silver bullet, but as a critical lever to support more open, competitive and innovative digital environments.
It offers a timely comparison: Brazil, a jurisdiction that has demonstrated its ability to build effective digital public infrastructure (Pix), thereby getting rid of the extractive Visa-Mastercard duopoly, and the European Union, which has so far struggled to do the same. At the same time, Europe has taken the lead in legislating to curb Big Tech’s power, and other regions, including Brazil, are now watching the Commission's enforcement of this legislation closely.
All this, just as transatlantic tensions over digital regulation resurface, and as the EC DMA Team does its utmost to stay below Trump’s radar. And then there's the DMCCA (and UK politics). 

Together with Isa Stasi and Ian Brown, our task on Tuesday is to share a few lessons from the European experience. So what is it, really, that we have to offer from this side of the Atlantic?

As for my contribution, I’m still finalising the details. Not long ago, I wouldn’t have had much to say about EU interoperability, at least not anything terribly useful for promoting open, fair and competitive digital markets. But the past few months have been surprisingly lively. Four developments stand out, and I hope they can add a little spice to our conversation. I will most likely begin with the antitrust commitments by Apple concerning NFC (Apple Pay), and reflect on their aftermath. Next, I’ll briefly touch on the recent judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union regarding interoperability of the Android Auto OS. I’ll then say a few words about the Commission’s specification decisions on Apple’s interoperability obligations under Article 6(7) of the DMA. And finally, I’ll offer some thoughts on prospects for stronger DMA enforcement, on the case for refining the regulatory framework, and even on the EuroStack (10 minutes in total :-)). 

The first reflection I would like to offer concerns access to Near-Field Communication (NFC) functionality, a technology which, until mid-2024, Apple had reserved exclusively for its own Apple Pay service within the EEA. An important point to note is that, across Europe, NFC, a technology not developed by Apple, has become the standard for mobile payment. It enables fast, contactless transactions, secured through tokenisation and encryption. Virtually all payment terminals in the EEA now support it. 

It is now almost exactly one year since the European Commission made Apple’s commitments in the Apple Pay case legally binding. These commitments are centred squarely on interoperability: Apple is required to allow third parties access to the NFC functionality for payment purposes on iOS devices. As a result, a wide range of developers can, in principle, begin to use this technology to offer alternative NFC  payment services. Even though relatively little time has passed, it is important, I believe, to ask whether anyone has actually seized this opportunity, whether any new entrants have made their way into the NFC in-store mobile wallet market on iOS. There have, in fact, been some entries, though so far limited to a few countries rather than on an EU-wide scale. As illustrated at the most recent OECD Competition Committee meeting in June, the first to enter was Vipps MobilePay, though its launch remains limited to Norway, and facing huge hindrances to becoming a pan-European interoperable wallet (Single Market, anyone?). Next came a US tech firm, hardly a small player, namely PayPal, which is currently rolling out its wallet in Germany. German cooperative banks have also signalled their intention to enter this space soon, likewise focusing on the German market. In the announcement, it is explicitly stated that Apple Pay will no longer be needed to make payments with the new service, a move framed as part of a broader effort to raise awareness of how heavily payment systems in Europe rely on US corporations such as Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and, of course, Apple. The ongoing trade tensions with the US are cited as an additional reason for concern. This raises a broader question: can interoperability serve not only as a tool to promote competition, but also as a means of advancing digital sovereignty? The answer, perhaps, is that interoperability is certainly a first step, but a far more effective approach, had it been pursued from the outset, would have been to establish a digital public infrastructure for electronic payments, along the lines of Brazil’s Pix. Crucially, this would have required a broad adoption mandate for banks operating across the EEA. If done properly, such a system could have delivered both competition and sovereignty in a more structural and sustainable way. A related and important question is what went wrong with SEPA, the Single Euro Payments Area. Conceived as a cornerstone of European financial integration, SEPA has largely failed to deliver the kind of common digital payment infrastructure that could support genuine sovereignty and competition at scale. Even though scepticism remains high, it remains to be seen whether the Instant Payments Regulation, now in force, with serious enforcement beginning this year, will offer an effective fix to SEPA’s shortcomings. The other, and perhaps enduring, question is whether the commitments offered by Apple were ever sufficient. More fundamentally, even if the commitments had been ideal, one must ask how much they could realistically achieve in isolation. If anticompetitive conditions persist in adjacent markets, and addressing interoperability at just one layer may do little to resolve distortions that are structural and multi-layered in nature (e.g., terminals?). Moreover, to fully benefit, at the EEA-scale, from access to previously gated functionalities, new entrants would need to rely on other components of essential digital public infrastructure, most notably, the European Digital Identity, meant to be enabled by the eIDAS 2.0 framework.

Even from the few observations above, it becomes clear that getting interoperability right, as a driver of innovation, competition, and even digital sovereignty, is no small feat. It requires multiple elements to come together in a coherent and sustained manner. It is far from simply unleashing latent energies held back by a textbook refusal to provide interoperability. In the Brazilian context, the national scope of the market, combined with the groundwork already laid in this area by the regulator, may well place the competition authority in a favourable position to act effectively. That said, it is beyond doubt that the refusal to enable interoperability has often been used strategically by Big Tech players as an anticompetitive tool.  In some cases, it served to block potentially disruptive innovators at a critical moment; in others, it was used to secure and preserve market positions in areas where new business opportunities were emerging, as Apple did with NFC functionality until recently, and as Google did in relation to Android Auto, for which it was sanctioned by the Italian competition authority. 

This latter case also triggered a preliminary reference to the EU Court of Justice, which did not miss the opportunity to say once again something helpful, a development I would like to briefly address as the second point in my remarks. That the effectiveness of the branch of competition law tasked with preventing and prohibiting abuses of market power has been profoundly challenged by the rise of Big Tech is, of course, no secret. One aspect long recognised as particularly ill-suited to the digital context is the so-called Essential Facilities Doctrine, particularly in its Bronner formulation.The Court’s ruling in Android Auto provides a further fix, in the form of a "clarification" of the doctrine, perhaps a limited one, but a welcome one nonetheless. The case concerned Google’s refusal to allow Enel X’s electric vehicle charging app to interoperate with the OS Android Auto, citing security concerns and the burdens of developing a new template. The Italian competition authority (ICA) found this refusal to be in breach of Article 102 TFEU and ordered Google to enable interoperability. 

Last slide of my 2021 presentation 

In a 2021 ASCOLA Conference online presentation (Covid time, my last one) discussing the case, my first research question was whether the legal and economic reasoning proposed by the ICA would have made it more agile for competition authorities to assess interoperability cases involving digital platforms under Art. 102 TFEU. We can, at this point, confidently answer in the affirmative, and that is good news. From my perspective, what deserves particular emphasis is that the Court made a meaningful contribution on the issue of safeguarding investment and innovation incentives. While the arguments put forward certainly merit further reflection, the Court’s reasoning was sufficient to effectively dismantle the familiar defence invariably deployed by Big Tech in abuse of dominance cases. Unlike the infrastructure at issue in Bronner, Google had not developed the Android Auto OS to serve its own needs to secure a competitive advantage. On the contrary, it was explicitly designed to encourage participation by complementors, a fact that clearly undermines the argument that granting access would have reduced Google’s incentives to invest. To what extent this workaround can be relied upon beyond the specific platform ("complementors") context and across different digital services and types of infrastructure remains to be seen. 

The second question I raised during the ASCOLA presentation, bearing in mind that this was back in 2021, after the DMA had been tabled but before it became law, was how to frame the relationship between ex post and ex ante approaches to interoperability mandates going forward. The ex ante approach to interoperability introduced by the DMA will form the third point of my remarks. But before that, a few words are in order on the relationship between ex ante and ex post interventions and, more broadly, between traditional antitrust law and emerging forms of digital regulation with regard to interoperability, which can be of some interest specifically in the context of our transatlantic dialogue.  The first thing to note is that the Commission’s experience in the Apple Pay commitments proceedings, discussed earlier, appears to have fed directly into the current phase of DMA enforcement. This is evident in the confidence with which the Commission has now moved to specify Apple’s interoperability obligations under Article 6(7), a point I will return to shortly. The second aspect I wish to highlight, though much more could be said, is that courts are reading the DMA and drawing inspiration from it, even when interpreting traditional antitrust law. This is clearly visible in the Android Auto case, where a regulatory approach inspired by the DMA can be seen in how the Court assessed what may constitute an objective justification for refusing to grant interoperability. In my view, all things considered, this too is a positive development.

The prince app developer (see blog post)

With the third point, we turn to the DMA. Ensuring certain levels of interoperability is clearly a priority for the EU legislator, as a means to promote digital markets that are fair and contestable. This is evident from a range of obligations whose proper compliance by gatekeepers presupposes different degrees of interoperability between their services and third party services. In this context, I would like to say a few words about Article 6(7), which has recently been the focus of significant enforcement activity by the Commission. As I write these lines, the 2025 Apple Enforcement Workshop is taking place, with an entire session dedicated to Apple’s compliance journey with this very provision. Apple was required to comply with Article 6(7), and the other DMA obligations, by 7 March 2024. This has evidently not occurred, and the Commission has taken notice. To address such situations, the DMA introduces a new tool: the specification proceeding. Under Article 8, the Commission can unilaterally determine the measures needed for compliance, unlike commitment proceedings, which rely on the company’s own proposals to avoid a formal finding of antitrust infringement. The Commission issued two specification decisions in relation to Apple last March: one concerning the process for handling interoperability requests, and the other relating to interoperability with connected devices. With the latter, the Commission specifies, among other things, how Apple should provide effective interoperability with the NFC controller in Reader/Writer mode by the end of 2025 at the latest. The scope of the NFC part of the decision is therefore significantly broader than last year’s antitrust commitments. It is also clear that interoperability with this feature is in high demand and, in principle, should foster innovation. This is reinforced by the fact that Article 6(7) does not allow Apple to dictate which services or products may make use of the interoperability obligation. What stands out in this respect is also the in-house technological expertise the Commission has already developed regarding the services offered by the gatekeepers it regulates. This expertise enables it, as in this case, to engage eye to eye with a giant like Apple.

The fourth and final aspect I would like to briefly touch on relates to a pronounced sense of urgency. For instance, I find it worrying that it is considered normal for a study on the impact of emerging technologies on the DMA to take up to a year to produce. In the same vein, if we come to realise that the DMA is insufficient, whether in terms of its scope of core platform services or the need for additional obligations, then the time to act is now, and this relates also to the possible need for additional interoperability obligations. We cannot afford to lose time. However, even for the most determined regulator (and well equipped, also financially) in the world, it is very difficult, though not impossible, as we have just seen, to impose interoperability obligations on powerful and recalcitrant gatekeepers. But that is precisely what lies ahead if we allow them to build the digital infrastructure on which we all then come to depend. Equally difficult, and arguably wishful thinking, is relying on the industry to deliver effective interoperability solutions. This has been attempted in the EU for years, with very limited results. So how do we move forward? Well, perhaps by starting with a good look back. We need retrospective analyses to understand how we ended up letting a handful of players control the digital infrastructures we all rely on, not to point fingers at antitrust enforcement alone, but to get a clearer picture of the broader dynamics, which likely vary across different digital services. On this, as on many other things, I fully agree with Robin Berjon, who notes that everything in digital happened so quickly we didn’t even realise we were dealing with infrastructures, let alone how to properly regulate them. Secondly, the kind of public effort required, in terms of both capacity-building for smart regulation and "project" funding, must be laser-focused on identifying the type of infrastructures we need and how to get there. This type of mobilisation cannot be decoupled from public choices. This is particularly clear in the case of Pix, where inclusiveness was a key consideration (but almost accidentally ended up by solving an extractive duopoly problem). Moreover, infrastructural choices inevitably shape the kinds of technological innovation they enable. These are societal decisions, not technical footnotes (and, of course, we cannot afford for them to be significantly steered by even well-meaning think tanks nor other - European! - industry giants, from telecoms to aerospace). The upcoming plenary debate in the European Parliament on the Report on European Technological Sovereignty and Digital Infrastructure, produced by the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE), offers an excellent starting point for these much-needed democratic conversations.

To be discussed!

 

Workshops Reveal the DMA’s Broken Promises

 Chamber of Progress, here.

Facebook is starting to feed its AI with private, unpublished photos

The Verge, here.

After Notice and Choice: Reinvigorating “Unfairness” to Rein In Data Abuses

 L. Khan, S. Levine, S. Nguyen, here.

First-sale doctrine in the AI age: incentivising book bonfires! No externalities there?

 ArsTechnica, here. 

Picture chosen by ArsTechnica for the article.

This picture suddenly recalled a Ted Talk I gave 12 years ago touching also on the first sale doctrine.

Unbelievable how much went wrong since. 

EuroStack: a concrete pathway to European digital sovereignty and strategic autonomy

 CEPS Video here.

 

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Here's the EP Report; here's where the Greens would go further. 

Kick-off conference (24th Sep 2024)  here.

Essential facilities doctrine and digital ecosystems: case C-233/23 alphabet (android auto)

 P. Hornung, here.

Dutch Consumers' Association launches major legal action against Booking.com

 Belganewsagency, here.

Decoding Competition Concerns in Generative AI

 K. Tyagi, here.

ACM attaches strict conditions to acquisition of RTL Nederland by DPG Media

 Here.

Private enforcement of the Digital Markets Act (DMA)

 Barentskrans, here.

Apple’s app stranglehold is now a political flashpoint

 Podcast here.

Heads I Win, Tails I Win: Why US Cloud Giants Benefit from DeepSeek and Other Chinese Companies' AI Strategies

 C. Rikap, here.

Apple "changes" App Store rules in EU to [fake compliance] with [DMA] order

 

Reuters, here. 

Antidote: "daily fines of 5% of its average daily worldwide revenue, or about 50 million euros ($58 million) per day after being given 60 days to show it was in compliance with the bloc's Digital Markets Act."  

Apple, here.  

  

Senate Hearing on Deregulation and Competition with the amazing Doha Mekki

 Video here.

Federal judge sides with Meta in lawsuit over training AI models on copyrighted books. But scolds Alsup.

 TechCrunch, here.

UK politics blunts antitrust action against Google

 yep.

New digital competition dynamics: The Ai Slop

 J. Oliver, here.

Interoperability in Digital Platforms and its Regulation: Transatlantic Dialogue alive and kicking! [Spoiler alert: not with the US]

Webinar, 1 July,  15-17 CET. Register here if you want to pose questions, otherwise live on YouTube here. 

Together with Isa Stasi and Ian Brown, our task today is to share a few lessons from the European experience. I still vividly remember when Luca Belli came to the European Parliament to explain how digital sovereignty and digital public infrastructure can be built in practice, and how, in just three years, they managed to get rid of the Visa–MasterCard duopoly, which had long become more of a bottleneck than a service. So what is it, really, that we have to offer from this side of the Atlantic?