European Parliament Passes Digital Markets Act

The European Parliament passed the Digital Markets Act to ensure a level playing field for all digital companies, regardless of their size. The regulations will lay down clear rules for big platforms - a list of “dos” and “don’ts” - which aim to stop them from imposing unfair conditions on businesses and consumers. Such practices include ranking services and products offered by the gatekeeper itself higher than similar services or products offered by third parties on the gatekeeper's platform or not giving users the possibility of uninstalling any preinstalled software or app. The rules should boost innovation, growth and competitiveness and will help smaller companies and start-ups compete with very large players. The Digital Markets Act will also set out the criteria for identifying large online platforms as gatekeepers and will give the European Commission the power to carry out market investigations, allowing for updating the obligations for gatekeepers when necessary and sanctioning bad behaviour. Negotiations with the EU governments are planned to start in the first half of 2022.