Dirk Auer on EU DMA Review and Its Impact on Consumers and Innovation
A recent Brussels Signal article discusses the European Commission’s review of the Digital Markets Act. ICLE Director of Competition Policy Dirk Auer was quoted in the article, where he said the review does not fully account for the regulation’s costs for consumers, businesses, and innovation, including compliance burdens, product changes, and potential effects on user experience. Read the full article here.
The International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) was highly critical of the EC, calling the review an exercise in “marking its own homework”.
ICLE scholars argue the EC glosses over documented costs, including fragmented user experiences, reduced security features and higher compliance burdens that ultimately hit European SMEs and innovation.
Dirk Auer, Director of Competition Policy at the ICLE, said an institution that wrote the rules, selected the targets, ran the consultations and now grades the outcome cannot credibly evaluate its own work.
ICLe pointed to independent estimates that suggest DMA-driven changes to Google Search have reduced clicks from Google ads to European hotel websites by about 17.6 per cent and cut direct hotel bookings by as much as 30 per cent — shifting revenue from European hoteliers to a handful of large online travel agents.