Digital Markets Act
What impacts has DMA on the ecosystem?
the Slovak Alliance for Innovative Economy (SAPIE) in cooperation with Entrepreneurs and Employers Poland held a webinar on the topic of Digital Markets Act (DMA). Read more about the theme in the summary below.
The Digital Market Act (DMA) is one of the complex legislations with the ambition to unify the digital single market of the European Union. The proposal came in December 2020 by the European Commission and within over a year, we see the proposals and discussions coming from the European Council and from the European Parliament.
DMA aims to ensure fair conditions for online competition and improve the welfare of the European consumers, improve stability and to create additional harmonization within the European digital single market. The new legislation also brings added value to the market and is beneficial to European businesses and entrepreneurs. On the other side, there is a fear that the proposals of the European Parliament as well as the European Council address various damaging and unintended consequences that DMA could have on SMEs, entrepreneurs as well as daily users. When talking about unintended consequences, we mean for instance additional GDPR consent introduced by the European Parliament or proposal of interoperability. It is important these unintended consequences are deeply analyzed and assessed.
While acting as gatekeepers, certain platforms play a crucial enabling role for European entrepreneurship as they serve as key gateway to the EU internal market. Although policy makers believe that DMA is just about a large technological company, they did not consider that proposed changes will inevitably impact business users and consumers of those platforms.
New rules and regulations might deteriorate the quality of services offered by a gatekeeper. The most important issue in DMA relates to questions such as prohibition of data in combination with impact or the quality of targeted advertising. We need an instrument which would make markets more competitive and agile. The CEE needs such an instrument and so does the EU.
DMA is perceived as a regulation that would only impact the gatekeepers. While prioritizing data, privacy and the interest of users, policy makers are neglecting equally important needs of entrepreneurs for whom targeted advertising is the only possible way to attract clients. Restrictions on targeted advertising would impact many local businesses and services as well as a wide range of startups or even freelancers. Therefore, there is a clear need not to look from the perspective of a regulator or gatekeeper only, but also to have a view of a consumer who does not know all the details and technicalities behind that.
Considering this complex piece of legislation, a proposal for a two months compliance period could be too short timeframe and in addition, it will be important to consider all the possibilities of diverging rules and force the practices across the EU member states. We hear from different players that the ecosystem would need six months at least.
While DMA aims to improve competitive balance, it might degrade the quality of digital tools provided to European businesses and users and deteriorate the position of European SMEs.
Interoperability is widely discussed as one of the breaking points between three institutions. Some parts of the proposal lack proper technical analysis or impact assessment which would back them up. It is also seen as a big challenge within the whole DMA proposal, we can mention interoperability of social networks or messaging services which creates more questions to think about and the connection to the aspects like privacy, security and integrity or encryption. These are only a few examples of the ideas that are not mentioned in the proposal at all, and it remains extremely important to keep the regulatory discussions.
We will further follow the ongoing trialogues, bring news and the discussions of key players closer to you.
