“The competitive challenges of the digital economy continue to impose themselves as a priority justifying a long-term commitment and the deployment of significant resources” assures the Authority, which publishes its 2023-2024 roadmap.
The Autorité de la concurrence fights against anti-competitive practices and the excessive concentration of market power. Objective: to protect consumers and businesses and to support innovation, competitiveness and purchasing power.
Focus on DMA
The European regulation on digital markets (Digital Markets Act, DMA) will come into force on May 2, 2023. On this date, the European Commission will have designated certain digital platforms as “access controllers” – also known as gatekeepers – subject to specific obligations. What change the work of the Competition Authority.
“The DMA and competition law are two complementary, mutually reinforcing tools” indicates the Authority, which specifies that competition law “will apply to operators and practices not covered by the DMA”.
At the same time, the implementation of the DMA is supposed to improve “the Authority’s merger control capacity by allowing the competition authorities to know all the acquisition operations of the major platforms, which will have to inform the European Commission. , regardless of thresholds” specifies the roadmap.
Cloud and advertising: the files to follow in 2023
The conclusions of the sector inquiry on cloud computing will be made public in the first half of 2023 indicates the Authority, which will participate in addition to its national action “in the reflections on the regulation of the sector at European level, in particular within the framework of the European regulation on data (Data Act)”.
“The procedure opened with regard to Apple, concerning the methods of protection of the personal data of the users of the applications on its operating system iOS, will see its examination continued on the merits” finally specifies the Authority.
Other ongoing files, investigations into the relationship between Google and publishers and news agencies.
In April 2020, the Competition Authority had first imposed on Google to negotiate in good faith with online press publishers the remuneration for the recovery of their content.
But a year later, the Authority fined Google 500 million euros for failing to comply with its previous injunctions. The regulator ended up accepting Google’s commitments, but the file therefore remains under supervision.
Google is therefore an old acquaintance of the Competition Authority. In 2021, it imposed a fine of 220 million euros on Google, guilty of having biased its advertising tools for its benefit.
It should also be noted that the Competition Authority is led to take an interest in the practices of software publishers. Thus, last May, Cigref recalled having filed several referrals to the Competition Authority during the summer of 2021. He suspects anti-competitive practices on the part of certain suppliers in the sector of digital services to professional users.