{"id":7318,"date":"2022-03-14T22:58:56","date_gmt":"2022-03-14T21:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.d-kart.de\/?p=7318"},"modified":"2022-03-15T20:34:29","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T19:34:29","slug":"conference-debriefing-29-the-dma-inside-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.d-kart.de\/en\/blog\/2022\/03\/14\/conference-debriefing-29-the-dma-inside-and-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"Conference Debriefing (29): The DMA, Inside and Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Trilogue negotiations at Brussels on the Digital Markets Act are coming to an end, or so we believe \u2013 a final compromise is expected at the end of this month. While waiting for words to dissect, scholars from France and Germany met in Aix-en-Provence to discuss \u201cThe DMA, Inside and Beyond\u201d. Rupprecht Podszun<\/strong>, who currently serves as a Visiting Professor at the largest law faculty of the French speaking world (that is l\u2019Universit\u00e9 Aix-Marseille) gives us the details in this Conference Debriefing interview.<\/em><\/p>\n

Name of Event:<\/u><\/strong> \u201cThe DMA, Inside and Beyond \u2013 Symposium Digitization and Competition Law (II)\u201d. The II signalizes that there was a first edition, it was the Winter School 2021 in W\u00fcrzburg that Florian Heimann reported on here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Topic:<\/u><\/strong> The name speaks for itself, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

Place & Time:<\/u><\/strong> 7-9 March 2022, Aix-en-Provence. If this brings you the taste of Ros\u00e9 wine on your palate, the scent of lavender in your nose, the warm tickling of the sun on your skin and the sound of crickets chirping in your ears, you are just about right \u2013 with the wine. For the rest, please return in Spring or Summer!<\/p>\n

Host:<\/u><\/strong> The Sympozium was hosted by the most generous professor David Bosco, a household name in French competition law and the director of the Centre de Droit \u00c9conomique at Aix. He invited scholars from France and Germany. Actually, he cooperates with professor Florian Bien from W\u00fcrzburg University whose immaculate French and his impressive knowledge of Aix are an asset. Bosco\/Bien were supported by the Universit\u00e9 franco-allemande\/Deutsch-Franz\u00f6sische Hochschule.<\/p>\n

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Hosts Florian Bien (left) and David Bosco (right) opening the conference.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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I take it that English is the lingua franca when French and German scholars meet?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Bien s\u00fbr! Or at least, what everyone thinks sounds like English. But since there were no native speakers around no one felt bad about his or her language skills. And the menu in that Japanese restaurant that we went to was unintelligible to anyone anyhow unless, of course, you were trained in D\u00fcsseldorf\u2019s Immermannstra\u00dfe, that hot spot of Japanese food.<\/p>\n

Pardon?! The French took you to a Japanese restaurant in Aix-en-Provence?! Mon Dieu!<\/strong><\/h3>\n

C\u2019est pas un drame. Of course, David Bosco also took us to a decent three-courses-lunch avec des d\u00e9lices, but globalization is taking its toll. I overheard a French PhD student saying: \u201cYou should not leave Aix without having had a Pizza Capri!\u201d Oh, I forgot to mention Nathalie Nielson when speaking about language, she is a bi-lingual PhD student in economics from Nice University. She discussed the removal of the so-called free speech app \u201cParler\u201d from the app stores of Google and Apple and the cloud of Amazon\u2019s AWS which essentially meant the end of that Trump-supporting outlet.<\/p>\n

Not a big loss if you ask me.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

But a good example how Big Tech\u2019s private power may regulate competition and free speech at the same time. It was legendary Oliver Wendell Holmes jr., joined by the most fashionable Louis Brandeis, in a dissenting opinion in the case Abrams v. United States (250 U.S. 616 (1919)) who came up with the idea of a free \u201cmarketplace of ideas\u201d that Nathalie tries to revive.<\/p>\n

Brandeis, aha. The judge-turned-hero of \u201cprogressive antitrust\u201d, or, as the French would possibly say, \u201cle nouveau dirigisme\u201d!<\/strong><\/h3>\n

He also featured in an inspiring talk given by Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Marty who drew the great lines of history in regulating (quasi-)utilities \u2013 tracing the Digital Markets Act back to ideas born in the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688 or in American independence in the 18th<\/sup> century. The legacy of not granting monopoly or regulatory power to private companies is, according to Marty, an idea that is very much enshrined in a certain thread of history. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton discussed regulation issues back in 1790, striking a famous compromise (as you may remember from that musical<\/a>). 150 years later, Thurman Arnold, the US trustbuster, published \u201cThe bottlenecks of business\u201d \u2013 \u201cwe speak of gatekeepers these days\u201d, as Marty observed. The DMA\u2019s ambition is nothing new.<\/p>\n

So, French scholars subscribe to regulation? The DMA is a pet project of the French presidency of the European Union anyway.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Not so sure. Pierre Bentata, an economist from Aix-Marseille University (AMU) is very skeptical: He said that business users may be better off with the DMA, but that is not of concern for economists, since this is just wealth distribution. New ecosystems, so he thinks, will not be helped by the DMA, and the DMA may even decrease consumer welfare, for example through lower interoperability. Predictable adverse effects ahead, Bentata thinks.<\/p>\n