If you liked the European Union’s Digital Markets Act, the DMA, you will love the UK’s Digital Markets Unit, the DMU!
As Aurelien Portuese writes for the Center for European Policy Analysis, the DMU imposes preventative prohibitions on online platforms rather than sanctioning anti-competitive conducts after they occur. During a November conference that Portuese helped organize, Dr. Michael Grenfell, executive director of the Board of the Competition and Markets Authority, explained that “fast-moving” digital markets make current competition rules outdated. A few days later, his organization ordered Facebook to sell GIF platform Giphy, even though Giphy has no revenue.
It’s a gigantic, missed opportunity. Brexit Britain could have departed from the Brussels-inspired vision of competition. Instead, it is doubling down on the misguided continental techlash against US tech companies—at a time when London paradoxically appears well-placed to attract venture capital and global tech entrepreneurs.
