DMA Enforcement Decisions Hang in Balance for Big Tech
Dirk Auer, director of competition policy at ICLE, is quoted in this Law.com article on DMA enforcement decisions for big tech. Read the full story here.
In trying to explain why EU officials still haven’t issued the highly anticipated decisions, many observers have pointed to the new U.S. administration and tech giants’ increasing influence on the White House. U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to levy tariffs against countries that impose fines on U.S. companies.
But Dirk Auer, the Brussels-based director of competition policy at the International Center for Law & Economics, said this was unlikely.
“I don’t see much evidence, at least not publicly available, to suggest that they’re using these fines as a geopolitical bargaining chip,” he said.
Using the DMA fines as a negotiating tool would also mark a departure from long-standing practice, he added, describing EU antitrust enforcement decisions as generally “independent from political pressure.”
Instead, Auer suspects the decisions have not yet come out for “purely substantive reasons,” namely because Brussels officials are still finalizing them.
Auer said he expected the fines to be steep given the Commission’s track record —in the last few years it has issued billion-euro fines to Google, Apple, Meta and other large U.S. companies under the EU’s traditional antitrust enforcement process.