Author Archives: Lisanne Hummel

Lisanne Hummel

About Lisanne Hummel

After completing her BSc in International Business Administration at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, her LLB at KU Leuven in Belgium and her LLM in Law & Economics at Utrecht University, Lisanne Hummel worked in the financial sector as a legal counsel for several years. In August 2020 she left the financial sector and started her PhD at Utrecht University. Her PhD research focuses on disruptive technologies in relation to the market power of Modern Bigness and the (possible) response of European competition law. The PhD research is conducted as part of the fulfillment of the ERC Starting Grant project 'Modern Bigness' led by Prof. mr. dr. Anna Gerbrandy.

Contestability in the digital sector: the Digital Markets Act vs. disruptive innovation

Lisanne Hummel

This blogpost is part of a series of short commentaries on the European Commission’s proposals for a Digital Markets Act and a Digital Services Act, released on 15 December 2020. Stay tuned for more.

With the Digital Markets Act (DMA) the Commission wants to ensure a contestable digital sector, where the threat of new companies entering the sector keeps the existing firms’ market power in check. The DMA aims to increase the threat of new companies by imposing certain obligations on gatekeepers, who will most likely be the big tech companies: Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. However, these big tech companies strongly believe that it is not regulation but innovation that has kept the digital sector contestable and will continue to do so. The question is, will the DMA make the digital sector more contestable or should we keep relying on innovation?

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