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Spotlight on ...

THE DIGITAL MARKETS

ACT IS LAW

Text: Alan Rhode, Co-Founder Taxmen, Enrico Caruso

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is the new European regulation on digital markets. The
regulation was proposed by the European Commission in December 2020 and was signed
by the European Parliament and the EU Council in September 2022. It came into force
on the first of November 2022 and will become legally effective, for the most part, on the
second of May 2023.

his EU regulation aims to counter abusive The DMA has as its legal basis Article 114 of the Treaty on the
conduct before it arises and provides for Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which authorises
Twhitelists, blacklists and penalties for big the EU to introduce provisions to harmonise national rules and
tech companies that do not comply. This new regu- prevent divergences in the internal market.
lation is essentially an ex-ante regulatory instru-
ment: it governs and defines conduct and obliga- The DMA vests the European Commission with wide powers
tions for companies before the abuse takes place. In of investigation and enforcement. The European Commission,
contrast, antitrust law works ex-post: in other words, in its ‘impact assessment’, concluded that at the present time,
it sanctions behaviours after they have occurred. the dominance of a limited number of large platforms—the so-
called FANGS—in the digital market causes:

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