| Abstract [eng] |
This master's thesis focuses on the analysis of the most common competition issues raised by world‘s four largest digital platforms - Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon, and the possibilities to address them through legal regulation of existing competition law and Digital Markets Act proposed by the European Commission. In this age of information technology, with the rapid growth of the market power of these digital platforms, there is an increasing need to address these issues before digital markets tip irreversibly. The first chapter of the thesis discusses the characteristics and main features of digital platforms, which often determine the prominence of one platform. The latter chapter, inter alia, discusses in detail the main types of large digital platforms and their operating models are presented, which are particularly relevant for further analysis of the competition issues raised by digital platforms. The second chapter of the thesis analyses the most common examples of problematic behaviour of large digital platforms that exploit end users or foreclose competitors, including competitors within the platform itself, and limit their ability to compete. This chapter pays a lot of attention to the in-depth assessment of the impact of such behaviour on the values protected by competition law. The third chapter provides a detailed assessment of the existing legal regulation to address the competition issues raised by digital platforms and in a reasoned manner highlights the specific legal and factual challenges faced by competition authorities in investigating the activities of digital platforms and applying the existing provisions of competition law. In the end, after analysing the current legal regulation, it is conceptually assessed whether the proposed new EU competition law instrument – the Digital Markets Act - is able to address the issues examined in the thesis and the advantages of the proposed regulation are identified. |
