The Digital Markets Act (DMA) wants to ensure contestable and fair digital markets. In addition to its principal obligations, the DMA requires digital gatekeepers to inform the European Commission of any prospective merger (Article 14 DMA). Together with the Dutch clause contained in the EU Merger Regulation (Article 22 EUMR), this obligation will impact the future of digital merger control as the Commission will forward gatekeepers’ merger information to national competition authorities, which can then make use of the referral mechanism under the Dutch clause to enable the Commission to investigate the digital merger.
Vicky Robertson’s article on the issue was just published in the European Competition Law Review, and is freely available here with kind permission of the publisher: