Activities of Martina MICHELS related to 2020/0374(COD)
Shadow opinions (1)
OPINION on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act)
Amendments (4)
Amendment 56 #
Proposal for a regulation
Recital 1
Recital 1
(1) Digital services in general and online platforms in particular play an increasingly important role in the economy, in particular in the and society. In the European internal market, b they providinge new business opportunities in the Union and facilitatinge cross-border trading.
Amendment 57 #
Proposal for a regulation
Recital 1 a (new)
Recital 1 a (new)
(1 a) Digital services also shape changing forms of work and communication in public services and can facilitate European cultural exchange and the global availability of media content. Bodies providing public services are, to a degree, public economic entities operating on a non-profit basis. Accordingly, these bodies can be commercial users of digital services as well as end users or intermediaries providing access to services for other individual end users;
Amendment 58 #
Proposal for a regulation
Recital 2
Recital 2
(2) Core platform services, at the same timewhich are used in the economy and society, feature a number of characteristics that can be exploited by their providers. These characteristics of core platform services include among others extreme scale economies, which often result from nearly zero marginal costs to add business users or end users. Other characteristics of core platform services are very strong network effects, an ability to connect many business users with many end users through the multi-sidedness of these services, a significant degree of dependence of both business users and end users, lock-in effects, a lack of multi- homing for the same purpose by end users, vertical integration, and data driven- advantages. All these characteristics combined with unfair conduct by providers of these services can have the effect of substantially undermining the contestability of the core platform services, as well as impacting the fairness of the commercial relationship between providers of such services and their business users and end users, leading to rapid and potentially far-reaching decreases in business users’ and end users’ choice in practice, and therefore can confer to the provider of those services the position of a so-called gatekeeper.
Amendment 105 #
Proposal for a regulation
Recital 62
Recital 62
(62) In order to ensure the full and lasting achievement of the objectives of this Regulation, the Commission should be able to assess whether a provider of core platform services should be designated as a gatekeeper without meeting the quantitative thresholds laid down in this Regulation; whether systematic non- compliance by a gatekeeper warrants imposing additional remedies; and whether the list of obligations addressing unfair practices by gatekeepers should be reviewed and additional practices that are similarly unfair and limiting the contestability of digital markets should be identified. Such assessment should be based on market investigations to be run in an appropriate timeframe, by using clear procedures and deadlines, in order to support the ex ante effect of this Regulation on contestability and fairness in the digital sector, and to provide the requisite degree of legal certainty. Member States as well as European organisations and associations that have a legitimate interest in representing business users or consumers should be given the right to formally request a market investigation where they can provide evidence supporting reasonable grounds to suspect that any of four abovementioned cases has occurred. The requirement for the presentation of evidence must not be unreasonable high. The Commission may be decide not further investigate upon such request. In this case, it shall give sufficient reason for its decision.