TITLE:
New Ways to Address Competition Challenges in Digital Markets: Reflections and Enlightenment of the EU’s Proposal for a New Competition Tool
AUTHORS:
Qichao Dong
KEYWORDS:
New Competition Tool, Market Study Tool, Undertaking Commitment Regime
JOURNAL NAME:
Beijing Law Review,
Vol.14 No.3,
September
21,
2023
ABSTRACT: The proposal for the new Competition tool is the EU’s positive response to the structural competition challenges of the digital economy. It is an extremely flexible non-sanction competition instrument designed to empower the Commission to intervene in the market by developing binding remedies when there is no violation of competition law. This tool, referring to the UK market study tool, makes a pioneering exploration on the basis of traditional competition law enforcement tools and industry regulation tools. Although it helps to cope with the structural competition challenges in the digital era, it also faces severe legal challenges. The proposal of the new Competition tool does not appear suddenly, but is the result of the trade-off between the modernization of EU competition law and the introduction of economic analysis to highlight the dilemma of enforcement costs, and the abuse of commitment system leading to the stagnation of the development of the theory of competition damage, and the mutual promotion of the two systems evolution processes. The proposal of the new competition tool is an attempt to change the concept path, which is bound to face many doubts and challenges, but it also brings enlightenment for China’s competition governance in the digital era. In terms of method, competition status assessment is a beneficial supplement to anti-monopoly law enforcement. It is also necessary to reasonably grasp the status and function of economics in antitrust practice.