Europe’s Digital Single Mistake

[Commentary] Brussels has long used antitrust cases to achieve policy outcomes it can’t achieve otherwise, and so it is with the European Commission’s new plan to create a “digital single market,” or DSM. Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager announced that she will conduct a wide-ranging inquiry into why cross-border e-commerce isn’t more common in the single market. In her telling, around half of Europeans shopped online in 2014 but only 15 percent bought something online from a seller in another European Union state. The supposed culprit is the practice of “geo-blocking,” in which firms set different prices, or make products unavailable entirely, for consumers in different countries or regions. Likely targets of the inquiry include Netflix and Amazon. Europe’s digital strategy needs more “market” and less bureaucrat-imposed “single.” The sooner Brussels figures that out, the sooner regulators will stand aside and start allowing Europe’s online economy to flourish.