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. 

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.

 

---- 

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?

Amazon’s Second DMA Compliance Workshop – The Power of No: Where the Balance Should Land

Alba, here.  

Recording of the workshop here.

ANDREA BARTZ ET AL. V: ANTHROPIC

 Here. 

Excessive Wealth Concentration and Power

 CEU, here. 

I've been dealing with this topic for 7 lustra and it looks increasingly bleak - not my fault😉

WhatsApp banned on House staffers' devices

 Axios, here. 

CMA takes first steps to improve competition in search services in the UK

 

Here. 

Proposed decision here.

Roadmap here. 

Exploring consumers’ search behaviours here.  

Read also Sarah's blog post here ("Based on how it is currently offered and used, we have provisionally decided that Gemini AI assistant should not be included as a product within this scope").

"We have identified a further set of possible actions (for example, restricting use of default agreements and providing access to underlying search data) which are currently the subject of live litigation between the US Department of Justice and Google. We will consider our approach in these areas in light of developments over the coming months. This is in line with the CMA’s prioritisation principles and the government’s recent strategic steer, which encourages the CMA to consider where we are best placed to act"

Computational Antitrust 4th Annual Report: Official Release

 Video here. 

Did Thomas Regnier (EC) today say that DMA enforcement is indeed part of the US/EU trade negotiations?

 Video here.

A WSJ journalist asked but the answer is either a masterpiece or a bit too casual. 

The ACCC Digital platform services inquiry wraps up: so, what did we learn, and what’s next?

 

ACCC, FINAL REPORT here.

Key findings, here. 

Reading...

Balancing Security and Fair Competition

Open Web Advocacy, here.  

Let's Rewild the Internet

 M. Farrell, Video here.

Jonathan Kanter on Antitrust & Search, Digital media & Ad Tech

 Podcasts, here and here.

China, Made by Apple

 The Dynamist, here.

EU Near Deal on Nontariff Trade Irritants [read DMA & Co.]

WSJ, here. 

The quiet dismantling of the only meaningful tool Brussels has ever deployed to rein in Big Tech, or merely a tactical leak to shape the narrative and apply pressure? Either way, there is cause for concern. 

Imagining the Future of European Digital Infrastructures

 Video here.

2nd DMA enforcement workshop: Microsoft - Update on first year of DMA compliance

 Video here.

Link to the changes made last June here.  

Merger assessment guidelines

 ACCC, here.

Fiches pratiques IA sur la mobilisation de l’intérêt légitime pour le développement de systèmes d’intelligence artificielle

 CNIL, ici.

G7 Data Protection and Privacy Authorities’ Communiqué

 Here.

The Progressive Regulator Winning Over the Populist Right

 Podcast, here.

DMA (Team) Sudans, when will Meta's compliance with Article 5(2) finally flow?

Don't look for it in Rome...

  Nearly two months on, the Commission’s DMA non-compliance decision against Meta  was finally published yesterday [18 June]. Coincidentally or not, a German court also published a ruling yesterday, offering its own reading of the same DMA obligation with which, according to the Commission, Meta is not (yet?) compliant. As Wavesblog Readers will appreciate, both are of considerable interest. What follows are a few preliminary observations. Let me begin, however, with a brief disclosure. During the eight months in which I had the pleasure of consulting for Article 19, I had occasion to focus on Meta twice: first, in writing about an intriguing German judgment applying Article 102 TFEU (not the one you're thinking of, another one entirely); and second, precisely in relation to the application of Article 5(2) of the DMA.  As for the latter, in the course of that work I had reached the conclusion, now confirmed by the Commission in its recently published decision, that there was simply no way Meta could be considered compliant, a conclusion I had the pleasure of presenting in the Commission’s presence in beautiful Fiesole.

 

Why, then, did it take an 80-page decision, and why is Meta, in all likelihood, still not compliant more than a year after it was first required to be? The most obvious answer, of course, is that the obligation in question strikes at the very heart of Meta’s business model, not only as it stands today, but also with implications for future developments, given the EU legislator's insistence on DMA compliance by design, a theme that has been a recurring one here on Wavesblog. Moreover, in this case, the Commission is not simply tasked with interpreting and enforcing a 'standard' DMA obligation in relative isolation; to do so, it must also apply the General Data Protection Regulation in conjunction with the DMA. That these two legislative instruments converge in more than one respect is also confirmed by the German ruling mentioned earlier and to which we shall return in due course. On that note, we are still awaiting the joint EDPB/Commission guidance on the interplay between the DMA and the GDPR, which, according to  Commission’s remarks this week in Gdańsk, is expected imminently. Interestingly, the Commission takes this into account as a mitigating factor in determining the fine for non-compliance ("the Commission acknowledges that the interplay between Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 and Regulation (EU) 2016/679 created a multifaceted regulatory environment and added complexity for Meta to design its advertising model in a manner compliant with both regulations"). That might be perfectly understandable, were it not for the fact that we are, after all, dealing with Meta, which has elevated non-compliance with the GDPR to something of an art form worthy of Bernini. This raises both a puzzle and a question: will Meta be left to do much the same under the DMA? And might other gatekeepers be allowed to match, or even surpass, it? Is there, perhaps, a structural flaw in the DMA’s enforcement apparatus, just as there are, quite plainly, in the GDPR, that gatekeepers can be expected to exploit at every opportunity? Or is it simply a matter of DMA enforcement resources falling well short of what would actually be required? What, then, can be inferred from this particular decision in response to that question? Serious reflection is clearly needed here. For now, I can offer you, Wavesblog Readers, only a few very first impressions, but I’d be all the more keen to hear yours. 

Even before Compliance Day (7 March 2024), it is clear from the decision that the Commission already had serious reservations about the "Consent or Pay" advertising model that Meta was in the process of grinding out, which had been presented to the Commission as early as 7 September 2023. The decision makes clear not only that the Commission was in close dialogue with Meta, but also that it engaged with several consumer associations and other interested third parties, on both the DMA and privacy sides of the matter. On that note, a further question, though perhaps it’s only me. Should there not be, if not a formal transparency requirement then at least a Kantian one, for the Commission to list, even in a footnote, all the interested parties with whom it bilaterally discussed the matter?  On this point, one almost hears the Commission suggesting that such a transparency obligation might discourage others from speaking up, for fear of retaliation by the gatekeeper. The point is well taken, but one wonders whether some form of protected channel might be devised, a kind of "privileged observer’s window with shielding" available where reasonably requested, providing clear assurances that the identities of those coming forward will be safeguarded (short of being a whistleblower). Moreover, as is well known, this point tangentially touches on a broader issue. The EU legislator, likely with a view to streamlining enforcement, left limited formal room for well-meaning third-party involvement. The Commission-initiated compliance workshops, the 2025 edition of which has just begun, are a welcome addition, but they are, of course, far from sufficient. In particular, without access to fresh data provided by the gatekeepers, available only to the Commission, how are third parties expected to contribute anything genuinely useful at this point of the "compliance journey"? As we shall see, this concrete data was also an important point in the very process that led to the adoption of the non-compliance decision in this case (Meta knew that its 'compliance model' was producing exactly the result they wanted). The lawyers, economists and technologists on the DMA team have clearly had their hands full in the matching ring with Meta (hence, of course, the Sudans in the title). Even a quick reading of the decision reveals, between the lines and squarely on them, the array of tactics deployed by Meta to throw a spanner in the works of effective DMA compliance, all carefully orchestrated and calculated with precision, and surprising no one. But one does wonder whether the DMA’s hat might not still conceal other tools, better suited to crowdsourcing and channelling constructive efforts, particularly from those third parties who stand to benefit from the DMA (as we also heard in Gdańsk), from conflict-free academics, and from what might be called real civil society, genuinely committed to effective and resolute DMA enforcement, rather than the usual crop of gatekeeper-supported associations. 

To loosely paraphrase Microsoft at the 2025 Enforcement Workshop, Meta’s “compliance model from day one” was a marble (code)-carved binary choice, one that could scarcely have been further from what the EU legislator had in mind. Unlike the strategies adopted by certain other gatekeepers, Meta didn’t even bother to kick the compliance can just far enough down the road to create an illusion of movement. The opening of non-compliance proceedings came swiftly and had, by all appearances, been fully anticipated. The decision that brings them to a close contains no epiphanic surprises, and is lengthy only because Meta's counsel deployed the full repertoire of legal ingenuity, focusing in particular on arguments forged in the intersection between the DMA and data protection law. Time, then, for a modest walkthrough, dear Wavesblog Readers.

 

As one assumes it must by now form part of general digital literacy (until one realises it doesn’t, even when speaking to students born to parents who were themselves, perhaps, already digital natives), Meta "generates almost the entirety of its revenues from its advertising service." On Facebook and Instagram, both designated under the DMA, end users "post and consume personalised content." Upon registering, each user receives "a dedicated, unique user identifier... and all data tied to that user identifier is part of a unified user account for that environment, i.e., the Facebook environment or the Instagram environment." Meta combines the personal data it collects from that user within the same social network environment and further merges it with data gathered through another designated core platform service, Meta Ads, to display personalised advertising. It is solely this latter data combination that is at the heart of the non-compliance decision.

[I pick it up again now, not without noting that while I'm still writing this post, the 60-day deadline to comply with the cease-and-desist order, according to my calculations -  which are apparently wrong but I don't understand why -  has lapsed, and that DMA enforcement may well have found its way into the cauldron of Trump-era trade negotiations].

Let us suppose that you, dear Wavesblog Reader, use Instagram in the EU. Meta, as designated gatekeeper, according to the DMA (and commencing for real no later than today - 24 June - or on the 26th at the latest) must present you with the specific choice of a less personalised but equivalent alternative to the advertising-based service Instagram that you would use if you had given your consent to the combination of your personal data from Instagram with data from the Meta Ads. The object of attention are therefore "data processing activities performed by Meta for the purpose of providing personalised advertising" to you as end-user of Instagram. These "include the data processing activities referred to in Article 5(2), first subparagraph, points (a), (b), and (c)". 

Point (a) of Art. 5(2) refers to a situation in which a third party uses a Meta service and the personal data of end users who use the third party's service is provided to Meta and Meta processes that data to provide online advertising services. Point (b) applies to the combination of personal data from the designated service with other services offered by the undertaking or third-party services. Therefore point (b) does not apply only in order to provide personalised advertising. 

............

(Tbc, whenever I can - sorry!) 

DMA Periodic penalty payments for non-compliance? Not automatically

 Euronews, here. 

Advocate General Kokott proposes that the Court of Justice dismiss Google’s Android appeal

 CJEU, here. 

The role of technology experts in competition litigation

 Keystone, here. 

Meta 5(2) DMA Non-Compliance Decision

 EC, here.

[The one downloaded yesterday was _527, today _528  - the number of versions of your research article until the magic word "FINAL"]

Working on initial comments, bringing in also the German "train as you like" decision.

Urteil des OLG Köln (15 UKl 2/25) bzgl. des Trainings von Meta für ihre KI mit Daten von Facebook und Instagram

 Volltext hier.

A Competition Policy for Cloud and AI

 CERRE, here.

Digital Summit 2025 Gdansk

 Here.

Eine Juristin unter Ökonomen: Heike Schweitzers Wirken im Kronberger Kreis

 Bald hier.

Digital Decade in 2025: progress and outlook

 EC, here.

Antitrust Review Episode 44: In Conversation With Olivier Guersent

 Podcast, here.

[What went wrong, not for him but for competition and the EU consumers ;-)]

The next big power grab in AI? Why Meta’s Scale AI deal must be stopped

 SOMO, here.

The European Way | A Blueprint for Reclaiming Our Digital Future

 Chez Oles, here.

Reorienting Competition Law

 Panel, here.

Technology neutrality in EU digital regulation

 M. Almada, here.

Enshittification on steroids

 So Meta is starting to charge you for WhatsApp, with your data. And alternatives  are limited because of lack  of interoperable choices  of messaging services until now, despite the DMA. In reality, you’re paying for  Meta's AI  efforts that will increasingly manipulate you and, quite likely, kill off  much work altogether. 

Chat with EC’s Daniele Calisti: More room for procompetitive efficiencies?

 Podcast here.

DMA data portability: start thinking beyond closed silos

 OnFabric here.

Two T-Rex walk into a DMA bar...

 From the DMA Team, on the only platform (US, ça va sans dire) they really feel at ease, apparently: here.

My answer to the riddle: "Elementary, Robert! T stands for tyrannos - there can be more than one per CPS..."

Yours? 

Dynamic Competition Operationalized

 NLR, here.

High-Level Debate on Competition, Innovation and Data Protection

 EDPS, Video here.

I’ve watched almost all of it, but in terms of substance it was rather thin. Von der Leyen  I's  data economy strategy is already crumbling underfoot, with  the German industry, closely aligned with her party (and the new German government), poised to give it the final push. The only one you’d buy a used car from is Professor Louisa, but what can she realistically achieve almost single-handedly?

Reupping this because I loved (almost) every word of it: Robin Berjon at re:publica 25

 

Video here. 

Thank you for asking, Robin. This is my short answer but happy to discuss it further.

Concerning the very few words I loved just a bit less: the DMA is not enough, I quite agree, and it was never designed to work in splendid isolation. Competition law against Big Tech has been spectacularly ineffective, which rather invites the awkward question of whether it is even fundamentally capable of addressing the abusive exercise of economic power at all. Still, one could hope for reform, couldn’t one? That was the idea not so long ago. Now? Well, let’s say prospects are somewhat clouded: too much capture (and not just from the usual suspects: nostalgic lawyers clinging to familiar doctrines and IO economists with a keen eye for consulting fees aren’t exactly accelerating progress).
That said, change is seeping through, almost discreetly, from within the DMA’s own machinery: adjust your business model if necessary; unable to provide interoperability? We’ll happily spell it out for you; anti-steering? Surely you jest. And more will follow. Even judges seem to be taking notice, as the Auto Android ruling suggests.
Change is happening, slowly, admittedly, and perhaps depressingly so, given how history has picked up the pace of late. But still: this is democracy at work. And in the present political climate, it would be remiss not to say so.