By Heike Schweitzer, Justus Haucap, Wolfgang Kerber & Robert Welker
In 2018, the German Ministry of Economics and Energy commissioned a study on options for competition law reforms regarding the abuse of market power in digital markets. In this paper, the study’s authors summarize their analysis which had a major impact on Germany’s current competition law reform. In particular, we suggest to adopt new provisions to specifically address “tippy” markets and the market power of intermediation services, to adopt more flexible merger control provisions for “killer acquisitions” and to strengthen provisions on data related abusive strategies and data access claims. Many of the suggestions are now enshrined in the draft proposal for Germany’s planned competition law reforms.
