Professor Diane Coyle presents at European Competition Day 2020 in Berlin.
Professor Diane Coyle was invited to take part in European Competition Day 2020, organised by the German Presidency of the Council of the European Union. During the two-day event (7-8 September), Federal Economy Minister Altmaier presented the ambitious agenda on Covid-19, digitisation and competition, and Commission Vice-President Margarethe Vestager described the emerging approach to digital markets in the EU.
During Session 2, ‘A competition framework for the digital age’, Diane commented on the presentation by competition lawyer Professor Damien Geradin (Geradin Partners), ‘Stimulating competition in the platform economy’. She spoke about the UK’s recent Furman Review, as one of the members of the independent panel behind the report (31:09).
She emphasised the need for both a refreshed approach to anti-trust and merger policy for digital markets, and the need for regulation, including a code of conduct for strategically important companies operating digitally, and greater inter-operability and sharing of data. She also pointed out that the dynamics of digital markets meant competition authorities would inevitably be actively shaping markets – even when they took no action.
Diane and Damien later took part in a panel discussion about digital platforms with Michael Esser (Latham & Watkins), a lawyer working for Facebook, and Kristina Nordlander (Sidley Austin) as moderator (1:06:49).
The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy.
