Taming the giants: The DMA/DSA package

Digital platforms have become a core feature of the digital economy. They facilitate the exchange of goods, services, and information, and create much social value. But at the same time, they come with harmful structural features, namely the promotion of market concentration, the rise of new forms of power imbalances, the appropriation of user data on an unprecedented scale, the facilitation of infringements of protected rights and entitlements, and the endangerment of the integrity of public discourse. While the existing legal framework has not been able to address these problems and risks adequately, the EU legislature has experienced difficulties in capturing the specific regulatory challenges caused by digital platforms so far. Now the European Commission has attained a new level in the confrontation with a double strike: the proposals for a “Digital Services Act” (DSA) and a “Digital Markets Act” (DMA) are designed to provide a coherent regulatory framework for digital platforms. This article reflects on the DMA/DSA package and provides a normative analysis of the proposals structured along the lines of market failures.