The EU is stepping up the pace when it comes to regulating internet giants.

The deliberations on the Digital Markets Act (DMA) have progressed at record speed in recent months.

At the end of this week, the negotiators from the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the EU Commission want to agree on a compromise - not even a year and a half after the Commission presented its proposal.

Henrik Kafsack

Business correspondent in Brussels.

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Werner Mussler

Business correspondent in Brussels.

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New times will then dawn for Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft – but also for the Commission, which has usually taken many years to prove to the digital companies in tough antitrust proceedings that they are abusing their market power.

By the time she got there, it was usually too late.

Market power had turned into a monopoly, and there was no longer any question of competition.

The DMA is fundamentally changing EU supervision of digital groups: Whereas the Commission had previously examined - always afterwards - whether certain behavior by companies violated antitrust law, the direction of attack is now reversed: On a black list with precise specifications and a gray one , somewhat vague list, certain behaviors are simply forbidden to corporations.

This should allow the Commission to intervene quickly before the damage is irreparable.

Valid for the “Gatekeepers”

This should apply to all companies that control access to Internet platforms like a kind of gatekeeper.

In addition to the five large American groups, Booking and Tiktok are likely to be affected, perhaps also Zalando and Alibaba.

For example, they are forbidden from making their own offers better on their platforms, as Google has done in its search engine.

They must not tie their users to their own app store like Apple, or collect data from business users and then compete with them, as Amazon has been accused of doing.

Since the 10th amendment to the GWB, the possibility for the competition authority to prevent a company from certain types of behavior has also been enshrined in German antitrust law, more precisely in paragraph 19a of the GWB.

The Bundeskartellamt therefore already has options which the Commission is to be given in the future.

Authorities chief Andreas Mundt is nevertheless satisfied with the DMA.

“The DMA is basically a sensible step in order to be able to take more effective and, above all, faster action against digital corporations.

But we mustn't exaggerate it, and above all it's not a panacea," Mundt said in an interview with the FAZ

The head of the cartel office has concerns similar to those of many antitrust lawyers and experts.

"The DMA will also entail complicated procedures," says Mundt.

Like him, the Munich economist and “business wise man” Monika Schnitzer doubts that the commission will be able to manage with the planned additional employees – initially there were talks of 80, most recently only 20 – who are supposed to apply the DMA.

Even with the new law, the world will not be as easy as the commission says it will be.

It is true that the probative value should actually be reversed with it.

The Internet companies are supposed to prove that they are not violating the specifications of the black and gray lists.

In fact, they can easily turn the tables again - if they declare that they are acting in accordance with the DMA,

"Retrograde in a way"

Mundt sees a second disadvantage in the content of the black and gray lists.

“The catalog of Articles 5 and 6 of the DMA is, in a way, backward-looking.

It feeds on the experience of old competition cases.

At the same time, the catalog is formulated more or less conclusively.” The lists of the DMA should be able to be adjusted.

But that takes time.

The clause in German antitrust law is formulated more openly, says Mundt.

The Bundeskartellamt can therefore react better to new restrictions on competition.