Development of Digital Platform Economy and Problems of Regulation in European Union

Abstract

The ongoing growth of e-commerce has been changing the incentives and character of interaction between market participants at different levels of the vertical production chain. During the last 10 years, these trends have been attracting the attention of European antitrust and became a productive area of economic research. The altering nature of competition and the role of market participants influenced by the development of digital platforms have become the reference point for the emerging of new varieties of vertical restraints such as cross-platform parity agreements (across-platforms parity agreements). These types of agreements creates new incentives for firms. This was a challenge for the European Commission in the light of the preparation of the next edition of regulatory documents determining the legality of the application of vertical restrictive agreements, such as Vertical Block Exemption Regulation - "VBER" and Vertical Guidelines – "Guidelines for the Regulation of vertical restrictive agreements". We find it extremely interesting to identify to what extent the final versions of these regulatory documents took into account the opinions of judges, market participants and the academic community, who actively participated in identifying the most complex aspects of vertical interaction between firms and the growing role of digital platforms in this interaction.