Scholarship (ICLE)
Do Ecosystems Exist in EU Competition Law?
Abstract
At first glance, questioning the existence of ecosystems in competition law may seem merely provocative. After all, the term is pervasive in the antitrust debate, where competition in today’s digital world is routinely described as a race between and within ecosystems. Accordingly, new theories of harm and substantial adjustments to traditional antitrust analysis are frequently invoked. However, upon closer examination, doubts arise about the actual novelty of the concept. While the term ‘ecosystem’ evocatively captures the seemingly irrepressible expansion of digital conglomerates, the paper investigates whether it is also grounded in a genuinely distinctive analytical framework and legal theory.