Digital Markets Act Enforcement: Impact and next steps 

Cluster 1

This cluster will include research focusing on specific obligations and critically assessing how they have been implemented so far, their impact on users’ rights and on market contestability, and relevant trade-offs. Among others, research in this cluster will look at:

• Gaps in terms of markets, services and/or behaviours still overlooked, e.g. with regards to interoperability:
  o Vertical interoperability: are there other Core Platform Services (CPSs) to be considered? E.g. social networks, cloud services?
  o Horizontal interoperability: under which business conditions is there a business case for smaller messaging service? What does interoperability between social networks mean?
• Personal data protection and user empowerment beyond consent vs enhancing contestability. Among others: what is the role of digital intermediaries? What is the impact of anonymisation as a requirement to access search data?
• The impact of emerging technologies in DMA enforcement and their interrelation to technologies considered CPSs. E.g. To what extent can AI functionalities implemented in key parts of operating systems become essential for the competitive advantage of the gatekeeper?
• Methodology to determine the value created by the gatekeeper (i.e. mobile phone, an operating system) vs value created by the users (developers in particular) and how to determine what is the “gatekeeper rent”.

Cluster 2
This cluster will include research looking at the enforcement structure and at procedural issues. Among others, it will focus on:

• The DMA took inspiration from anti-trust procedure: what is working and what is not? What are possible solutions to current shortcomings? E.g. technical capacity to monitor and assess compliance; methodology for imposing fines; confidentiality and right of defence vs transparency vis à vis third parties and civil society.
• EU v national perspective, and role of NCAs: procedural alignment across the EU regulators vs alignment in substance: what could be done? Is one solution possible or even desirable?
• The DMA High Level Working Group: should it have an increased role with decision making powers? 
• The ‘duty of sincere cooperation’ as established by the Court of Justice of the EU: how can it be implemented concretely? Is such a duty sufficient anyway?
• Interplay with the broader EU digital rulebook. For example:
  o The ‘pay or consent’ across DMA, GDPR, DSA and consumer law;
  o How gatekeepers reacting to cybersecurity regulation affects interoperability (i.e. under the Cyber Resilience Act). Regulatory neutrality non-discrimination in Telecom including access rights, interconnection of devices and networks and the regulatory framework around interoperability.
  

Cluster 3
This cluster will include research that looks at the DMA in the broader geographical context:

• Geopolitical scenario: how the DMA lands/fits in trade and industrial policy priorities, both within and outside the EU
• DMA-style initiatives elsewhere. Among others:
  o The limits to sideloading in the Japanese ‘Act on Promotion of Competition for Specified Smartphone Software’;
  o The challenges of opening app store ecosystems in Brazil;
  o Tech regulation in China.