BEUC’s objective is to ensure that consumers, and ultimately society as a whole, obtain a fair share of the considerable benefits of digitisation of the economy through healthy competition.
We must avoid a situation where the most powerful companies protect themselves from potential entry into the market of newcomers. We clearly need free and fair competitive digital markets in which consumer welfare is optimised, and a level playing field where companies compete on merit and consumers benefit from autonomy and control.

BEUC wants competition agencies and relevant regulatory bodies to take action to achieve this goal. The notion that ‘the market will self-correct’ is not credible. The genuine threat to competition in  digital markets requires enforcers to adapt. Failure to do so may result in the tipping of markets, consumer harm and long-term distortions. It may also risk undermining consumer confidence in the ability of markets to deliver welfare and prosperity.

BEUC therefore wants an informed evolution of enforcement priorities, enforcement capacity and substantive theories of harm concerning digital markets.

BEUC intervenes in antitrust and merger investigations by the European Commission into specific companies in the digital sector, and in cases before the EU Courts concerning these competition decisions by the Commission, when companies may have harmed consumers, for example by abusively increasing prices or limiting consumers’ choice.

BEUC also recognises that regulation can usefully complement competition enforcement because it can outlaw behaviour that is potentially harmful for consumers before the harm is done. For example, BEUC welcomes the Digital Markets Act (DMA) as a step change in the EU’s approach to improving the way Europe’s digital economy works for consumers. In particular, the DMA will establish a series of pre-emptive rules on powerful digital companies wishing to operate on the EU’s Single Market. BEUC successfully engaged with the European Commission, European Parliament and Member States in the EU’s Council of Ministers to improve the DMA so that the legislation agreed in 2022 focuses more on consumer interests and ensures consumers have rights under the DMA, for example to freely choose which services and apps they want to use and whether they want tech companies to collect and combine their data from different services.