As the Digital Markets Act (DMA) progresses through the legislative mark-up phase, we’re today publishing our policy recommendations on how lawmakers in the European Parliament and EU Council should amend it.
We welcomed the publication of the DMA in December 2020, and we believe that a vibrant and open internet depends on fair conditions, open standards, and opportunities for a diversity of market participants. With targeted improvements and effective enforcement, we believe the DMA could help restore the internet to be the universal platform where any company can advertise itself and offer its services, any developer can write code and collaborate with others to create new technologies on a fair playing field, and any consumer can navigate information, use critical online services, connect with others, find entertainment, and improve their livelihood
Our key recommendations can be summarised as follows:
- Consumer Control: The DMA should ban dark patterns and other forms of manipulative design techniques. Data portability should also be included in the proposal to reduce switching costs for consumers.
txt - Interoperability: We propose to expand the interoperability mandate to allow regulators to restrain gatekeepers from behaviour that explicitly goes against the spirit of interoperability. It should also be extended to cover not only ancillary services but the relationship between core services.
txt - Innovation not discrimination: We propose to broaden the prohibition on self-preferencing in ranking systems to a general prohibition so as to address any problematic affiliated preferencing by gatekeepers of their own products in operating systems.
txt - Meaningful Privacy: We underline our support for the provision which prohibits data sharing between gatekeeper verticals, and encourage the effective enforcement of the GDPR.
txt - Effective Oversight & Enforcement: We recommend the oversight framework involve National Regulatory Authorities to reduce bottlenecks in investigations and enforcement.
We spell out these recommendations in detail in our position paper, and provide practical guidance for lawmakers on how to amend the DMA draft law to incorporate them. As the DMA discussions continue in earnest, we look forward to working with EU lawmakers and the broader community of policy stakeholders to help ensure a final legislative text that promotes a healthy internet that puts competition and consumer choice first.