Call for Papers! Effective DMA Enforcement: 2023!

European Commission officials and national competition authorities across the EU are preparing to enforce the Digital Markets Act (DMA). This will be a challenging exercise, and enforcers will face many questions brought in by this new regulatory framework.

While built on a number of rules that recall similar conducts – which have been sanctioned in the past as abuses of dominant position – the DMA is an entirely new legal instrument. It is to be expected that enforcers will look at the competition case law and literature as a reference point, but the DMA’s objectives are different, and complementary, to those of EU competition law. For this reason, enforcers should be cautious not to heavily borrow competition case law and concepts in the implementation of the DMA. Rather, they should work to interpret and apply the DMA rules in a way that guarantees their full potential in order to achieve the Regulation’s ambitious objectives of contestability and fairness in digital markets.

In this scenario, scholars have a key role to play. They can help assess the deeper layers and enforcement framework of the new rules, interpret their content, and assess the rules’ potential in their own right and in relation to other fields of EU law to support the enforcers in making informed decisions.

This call for papers aims to gather original work by scholars addressing so far overlooked themes and issues and to stimulate research and debate on the implementation and enforcement of DMA rules. We particularly welcome scholarly contributions that address one of the following themes, but other proposals fitting the general objectives of this call are welcome as well:

The goals of the DMA between contestability, fairness, and choice
Interpretative issues and how to ensure coordination among the enforcement of the individual rules
The relationship between the DMA and Articles 101 and 102 TFEU
The relationship with GDPR and other fundamental rights frameworks
Self-preferencing between guiding principles and concrete measures
Technical aspects of interoperability
App stores between fairness and contestability
Unintended consequences of the DMA: innovation, IP rights, and technological adoption/diffusion
Regulatory dialogue and stakeholders’ participation
The role and functioning of the High-Level Expert Group
Enforcement and cooperation issues between the Commission, the NCAs, and other relevant bodies
Compliance monitoring: who, what, and how (and necessary safeguards)
What effective compliance with the DMA means and how success can be assessed

Submission of abstract

Scholars are invited to submit an extended abstract 600-800 words long (excluding bibliography), which must describe:

Research question(s)
Methodology
Main (expected) findings of the paper
Contributions to literature and/or ongoing policy debates.

The extended abstract must be uploaded to the submission platform by 4 September 2023, 23.59h (in the submitter’s timezone). When submitting their abstract, scholars are required to disclose any funding or support they receive for their work. Details on the submission platform will be communicated soon.

Individual abstracts will be reviewed in a double blind peer-review. Please do not include names or any other identifiable information on the uploaded file or in the text of the abstract you submit to the platform. The platform records the author name(s) and contact information: the programme committee chair will be able to see that information. Full papers should only be submitted upon invitation, following the selection of abstracts. For further information on the submission process please contact [email protected].