Fitting the Digital Markets Act in the existing legal framework: the myth of the “without prejudice” clause

Konstantina Bania

European Competition Journal, 2023, vol. 19, issue 1, 116-149

Abstract: The Digital Markets Act (DMA), an EU Regulation establishing obligations for gatekeeper platforms in order to protect fairness and contestability in digital markets, will soon start to apply. In addition to the DMA, other (EU and national) instruments regulate platform conduct. Though the DMA explicitly provides that it will apply without prejudice to those other instruments, it is doubted whether it will merely complement them. In certain cases, the DMA may qualify as lex specialis, thereby prevailing over other regulations. In other cases, based on the principle of supremacy, the DMA may override national instruments that pursue legitimate interests other than fairness and contestability. There may also be occasions where the DMA may render certain tools devoid of purpose when this was not the intention of the legislator. In all the above cases, the DMA would not complement (but could possibly endanger) the effectiveness of the existing regime. Given the avalanche of legislative proposals for platforms, addressing potential conflicts between the DMA and other rules is essential to protect legal certainty and to ensure that the regulatory regime that governs harmful platform conduct reaches its full potential.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17441056.2022.2156730 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:recjxx:v:19:y:2023:i:1:p:116-149

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/recj20

DOI: 10.1080/17441056.2022.2156730

Access Statistics for this article

European Competition Journal is currently edited by Philip Marsden

More articles in European Competition Journal from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().