This article analyses the digital economy, its treatment under competition, and the need for potential regulation. The aim of this article is to answer the question, of how a legal framework looks like that, on the one hand, prevents possible undesir...

Various internet platforms have rapidly developed into central points of everyday life, for private individuals as well as for companies (often dominated by a single or a few companies). At the same time these internet platforms are advancing into more and more areas of business. This creates the risk of dependency, abuse of power, manipulation, concentration of power, centralization of data and information with corresponding effects on technological development, innovation, economy, society and politics. From an economic point of view, this article examines how the strong market positions of internet platforms arise and can be maintained. The dynamics of these technology and innovation-driven markets and the differences from conventional markets are also discussed. These internet markets have emerged from a series of innovations and are characterized by rapid technological development. Taking into account the economic peculiarities as well as knowledge from innovation and governance research, recommendations are drawn up on how these problems can be dealt with.

Digitization has changed economic activity in many ways. While digitization has contributed to a very dynamic development of markets and competition, concerns are also being expressed about powerful positions of some companies. The digital transformation poses new challenges for companies, consumers, politics and society. Competition policy is also required to address these developments and to adapt existing competition law, if necessary. The following analysis of digital markets showed that it is not possible, in general, to make concrete competition policy statements or even to give detailed recommendations for the antitrust analysis. The aspects are to be considered separately and in detail when examining search engines, social networks, trading platforms and other business models. On the other hand, data (and data analysis) should stand in the centre of competition law analysis due to their importance for the economic success of digital market companies.

National (civil) courts play a significant role in enforcing EU competition law as functional Union courts. This scientific article objective is to investigate the extent to which the European Commission is obligated to follow the decisions of national civil courts. The analysis requires an examination of the appropriate legal framework. As a result, in the first part of the paper, the European Commission obligation to take into account the decisions of the national courts from primary law perspective will be examined. Based on this, the second part explore the link between the European Commission and national courts from the standpoint of relevant secondary law. From the scientific methods we have used the analytical and descriptive method to analyse the current situation. By comparative method we introduce different views on the legal regulation. The presented topic has not been thoroughly examined in the literature on the subject thus far, giving the chance to identify avenues for future research.

In almost all sectors, online services play a much larger role than a few years ago. Data-driven platform models combine an ever greater degree of market power. The associated concentration effect leads to the displacement of medium-sized companies from the market. When looking at the large platforms of this new digital economy their success model is based almost exclusively on generating data and extracting economically useful information from this data. In relation to trading platforms, the use of data serves among other things to increase efficiency. The so-called data sharing offers numerous advantages that can be leveraged in connection with e-commerce platforms. Due to this, we will first take a closer look at e-commerce and the special economic characteristics of the business model of digital platforms (especially Amazon). The next chapter discusses the current legal framework and focus on the antitrust claims of retailers against online platforms. Then, we will deal with the legal-political approaches to the digital platform economy. The study concludes with various options for action which can be derived from the legal and economic explanations outlined in the previous chapters.

In e-commerce, data has long played a special role as a factor in competition between different players, and its importance continues to grow. A review of the current legal situation is a basic prerequisite for any legal policy proposals to improve market access conditions and thus competition in a platform economy. As a result, the current article attempts to discuss the legal framework that governs the relevant legal relationships between platforms and retailers on the example of Amazon. The emphasis is on the scope of retailers’ antitrust claims against online platforms, as well as the extent of platforms’ obligations. Participation and access claims relating to data or information, as well as certain marketing services, are particularly relevant in this regard.