Archives For

The practice of so-called “self-preferencing” has come to embody the zeitgeist of competition policy for digital markets, as legislative initiatives are undertaken in jurisdictions around the world that to seek, in various ways, to constrain large digital platforms from granting favorable treatment to their own goods and services. The core concern cited by policymakers is that gatekeepers may abuse their dual role—as both an intermediary and a trader operating on the platform—to pursue a strategy of biased intermediation that entrenches their power in core markets (defensive leveraging) and extends it to associated markets (offensive leveraging).

In addition to active interventions by lawmakers, self-preferencing has also emerged as a new theory of harm before European courts and antitrust authorities. Should antitrust enforcers be allowed to pursue such a theory, they would gain significant leeway to bypass the legal standards and evidentiary burdens traditionally required to prove that a given business practice is anticompetitive. This should be of particular concern, given the broad range of practices and types of exclusionary behavior that could be characterized as self-preferencing—only some of which may, in some specific contexts, include exploitative or anticompetitive elements.

In a new working paper for the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE), I provide an overview of the relevant traditional antitrust theories of harm, as well as the emerging case law, to analyze whether and to what extent self-preferencing should be considered a new standalone offense under EU competition law. The experience to date in European case law suggests that courts have been able to address platforms’ self-preferencing practices under existing theories of harm, and that it may not be sufficiently novel to constitute a standalone theory of harm.

European Case Law on Self-Preferencing

Practices by digital platforms that might be deemed self-preferencing first garnered significant attention from European competition enforcers with the European Commission’s Google Shopping investigation, which examined whether the search engine’s results pages positioned and displayed its own comparison-shopping service more favorably than the websites of rival comparison-shopping services. According to the Commission’s findings, Google’s conduct fell outside the scope of competition on the merits and could have the effect of extending Google’s dominant position in the national markets for general Internet search into adjacent national markets for comparison-shopping services, in addition to protecting Google’s dominance in its core search market.

Rather than explicitly posit that self-preferencing (a term the Commission did not use) constituted a new theory of harm, the Google Shopping ruling described the conduct as belonging to the well-known category of “leveraging.” The Commission therefore did not need to propagate a new legal test, as it held that the conduct fell under a well-established form of abuse. The case did, however, spur debate over whether the legal tests the Commission did apply effectively imposed on Google a principle of equal treatment of rival comparison-shopping services.

But it should be noted that conduct similar to that alleged in the Google Shopping investigation actually came before the High Court of England and Wales several months earlier, this time in a dispute between Google and Streetmap. At issue in that case was favorable search results Google granted to its own maps, rather than to competing online maps. The UK Court held, however, that the complaint should have been appropriately characterized as an allegation of discrimination; it further found that Google’s conduct did not constitute anticompetitive foreclosure. A similar result was reached in May 2020 by the Amsterdam Court of Appeal in the Funda case.  

Conversely, in June 2021, the French Competition Authority (AdlC) followed the European Commission into investigating Google’s practices in the digital-advertising sector. Like the Commission, the AdlC did not explicitly refer to self-preferencing, instead describing the conduct as “favoring.”

Given this background and the proliferation of approaches taken by courts and enforcers to address similar conduct, there was significant anticipation for the judgment that the European General Court would ultimately render in the appeal of the Google Shopping ruling. While the General Court upheld the Commission’s decision, it framed self-preferencing as a discriminatory abuse. Further, the Court outlined four criteria that differentiated Google’s self-preferencing from competition on the merits.

Specifically, the Court highlighted the “universal vocation” of Google’s search engine—that it is open to all users and designed to index results containing any possible content; the “superdominant” position that Google holds in the market for general Internet search; the high barriers to entry in the market for general search services; and what the Court deemed Google’s “abnormal” conduct—behaving in a way that defied expectations, given a search engine’s business model, and that changed after the company launched its comparison-shopping service.

While the precise contours of what the Court might consider discriminatory abuse aren’t yet clear, the decision’s listed criteria appear to be narrow in scope. This stands at odds with the much broader application of self-preferencing as a standalone abuse, both by the European Commission itself and by some national competition authorities (NCAs).

Indeed, just a few weeks after the General Court’s ruling, the Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) handed down a mammoth fine against Amazon over preferential treatment granted to third-party sellers who use the company’s own logistics and delivery services. Rather than reflecting the qualified set of criteria laid out by the General Court, the Italian decision was clearly inspired by the Commission’s approach in Google Shopping. Where the Commission described self-preferencing as a new form of leveraging abuse, AGCM characterized Amazon’s practices as tying.

Self-preferencing has also been raised as a potential abuse in the context of data and information practices. In November 2020, the European Commission sent Amazon a statement of objections detailing its preliminary view that the company had infringed antitrust rules by making systematic use of non-public business data, gathered from independent retailers who sell on Amazon’s marketplace, to advantage the company’s own retail business. (Amazon responded with a set of commitments currently under review by the Commission.)

Both the Commission and the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority have lodged similar allegations against Facebook over data gathered from advertisers and then used to compete with those advertisers in markets in which Facebook is active, such as classified ads. The Commission’s antitrust proceeding against Apple over its App Store rules likewise highlights concerns that the company may use its platform position to obtain valuable data about the activities and offers of its competitors, while competing developers may be denied access to important customer data.

These enforcement actions brought by NCAs and the Commission appear at odds with the more bounded criteria set out by the General Court in Google Shopping, and raise tremendous uncertainty regarding the scope and definition of the alleged new theory of harm.

Self-Preferencing, Platform Neutrality, and the Limits of Antitrust Law

The growing tendency to invoke self-preferencing as a standalone theory of antitrust harm could serve two significant goals for European competition enforcers. As mentioned earlier, it offers a convenient shortcut that could allow enforcers to skip the legal standards and evidentiary burdens traditionally required to prove anticompetitive behavior. Moreover, it can function, in practice, as a means to impose a neutrality regime on digital gatekeepers, with the aims of both ensuring a level playing field among competitors and neutralizing the potential conflicts of interests implicated by dual-mode intermediation.

The dual roles performed by some platforms continue to fuel the never-ending debate over vertical integration, as well as related concerns that, by giving preferential treatment to its own products and services, an integrated provider may leverage its dominance in one market to related markets. From this perspective, self-preferencing is an inevitable byproduct of the emergence of ecosystems.

However, as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has recognized, self-preferencing conduct is “often benign.” Furthermore, the total value generated by an ecosystem depends on the activities of independent complementors. Those activities are not completely under the platform’s control, although the platform is required to establish and maintain the governance structures regulating access to and interactions around that ecosystem.

Given this reality, a complete ban on self-preferencing may call the very existence of ecosystems into question, challenging their design and monetization strategies. Preferential treatment can take many different forms with many different potential effects, all stemming from platforms’ many different business models. This counsels for a differentiated, case-by-case, and effects-based approach to assessing the alleged competitive harms of self-preferencing.

Antitrust law does not impose on platforms a general duty to ensure neutrality by sharing their competitive advantages with rivals. Moreover, possessing a competitive advantage does not automatically equal an anticompetitive effect. As the European Court of Justice recently stated in Servizio Elettrico Nazionale, competition law is not intended to protect the competitive structure of the market, but rather to protect consumer welfare. Accordingly, not every exclusionary effect is detrimental to competition. Distinctions must be drawn between foreclosure and anticompetitive foreclosure, as only the latter may be penalized under antitrust.

As the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) has entered the final stage of its approval process, one matter the inter-institutional negotiations appears likely to leave unresolved is how the DMA’s the relationship with competition law affects the very rationale and legal basis for the intervention. 

The DMA is explicitly grounded on the questionable assumption that competition law alone is insufficient to rein in digital gatekeepers. Accordingly, EU lawmakers have declared the proposal to be a necessary regulatory intervention that will complement antitrust rules by introducing a set of ex ante obligations.

To support this line of reasoning, the DMA’s drafters insist that it protects a different legal interest from antitrust. Indeed, the intervention is ostensibly grounded in Article 114 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), rather than Article 103—the article that spells out the implementation of competition law. Pursuant to Article 114, the DMA opts for centralized enforcement at the EU level to ensure harmonized implementation of the new rules.

It has nonetheless been clear from the very beginning that the DMA lacks a distinct purpose. Indeed, the interests it nominally protects (the promotion of fairness and contestability) do not differ from the substance and scope of competition law. The European Parliament has even suggested that the law’s aims should also include fostering innovation and increasing consumer welfare, which also are within the purview of competition law. Moreover, the DMA’s obligations focus on practices that have already been the subject of past and ongoing antitrust investigations.

Where the DMA differs in substance from competition law is simply that it would free enforcers from the burden of standard antitrust analysis. The law is essentially a convenient shortcut that would dispense with the need to define relevant markets, prove dominance, and measure market effects (see here). It essentially dismisses economic analysis and the efficiency-oriented consumer welfare test in order to lower the legal standards and evidentiary burdens needed to bring an investigation.

Acknowledging the continuum between competition law and the DMA, the European Competition Network and some member states (self-appointed as “friends of an effective DMA”) have proposed empowering national competition authorities (NCAs) to enforce DMA obligations.

Against this background, my new ICLE working paper pursues a twofold goal. First, it aims to show how, because of its ambiguous relationship with competition law, the DMA falls short of its goal of preventing regulatory fragmentation. Moreover, despite having significant doubts about the DMA’s content and rationale, I argue that fully centralized enforcement at the EU level should be preserved and that frictions with competition law would be better confined by limiting the law’s application to a few large platforms that are demonstrably able to orchestrate an ecosystem.

Welcome to the (Regulatory) Jungle

The DMA will not replace competition rules. It will instead be implemented alongside them, creating several overlapping layers of regulation. Indeed, my paper broadly illustrates how the very same practices that are targeted by the DMA may also be investigated by NCAs under European and national-level competition laws, under national competition laws specific to digital markets, and under national rules on economic dependence.

While the DMA nominally prohibits EU member states from imposing additional obligations on gatekeepers, member states remain free to adapt their competition laws to digital markets in accordance with the leeway granted by Article 3(3) of the Modernization Regulation. Moreover, NCAs may be eager to exploit national rules on economic dependence to tackle perceived imbalances of bargaining power between online platforms and their business counterparties.

The risk of overlap with competition law is also fostered by the DMA’s designation process, which may further widen the law’s scope in the future in terms of what sorts of digital services and firms may fall under the law’s rubric. As more and more industries explore platform business models, the DMA would—without some further constraints on its scope—be expected to cover a growing number of firms, including those well outside Big Tech or even native tech companies.

As a result, the European regulatory landscape could become even more fragmented in the post-DMA world. The parallel application of the DMA and antitrust rules poses the risks of double jeopardy (see here) and of conflicting decisions.

A Fully Centralized and Ecosystem-Based Regulatory Regime

To counter the risk that digital-market activity will be subject to regulatory double jeopardy and conflicting decisions across EU jurisdictions, DMA enforcement should not only be fully centralized at the EU level, but that centralization should be strengthened. This could be accomplished by empowering the Commission with veto rights, as was requested by the European Parliament.

This veto power should certainly extend to national measures targeting gatekeepers that run counter to the DMA or to decisions adopted by the Commission under the DMA. But it should also include prohibiting national authorities from carrying out investigations on their own initiative without prior authorization by the Commission.

Moreover, it will also likely be necessary to significantly redefine the DMA’s scope. Notably, EU leaders could mitigate the risk of fragmentation from the DMA’s frictions with competition law by circumscribing the law to ecosystem-related issues. This would effectively limit its application to a few large platforms who are demonstrably able to orchestrate an ecosystem. It also would reinstate the DMA’s original justification, which was to address the emergence of a few large platforms who are able act as gatekeepers and enjoy an entrenched position as a result of conglomerate ecosystems.

Changes to the designation process should also be accompanied by confining the list of ex ante obligations the law imposes. These should reflect relevant differences in platforms’ business models and be tailored to the specific firm under scrutiny, rather than implementing a one-size-fits-all approach.

There are compelling arguments against the policy choice to regulate platforms and their ecosystems like utilities. The suggested adaptations would at least acknowledge the regulatory nature of the DMA, removing the suspicion that it is just an antitrust intervention vested by regulation.