As 2025 draws to a close, the SCiDA (Shaping Competition in the Digital Age) project reflects on a year of remarkable academic output, policy engagement, and collaborative research that has shaped discourse around digital markets regulation across Europe and beyond. Our team has grown and evolved, our research has deepened, and our contributions to the evolving regulatory landscape have been substantial. You want to know what the SCiDA Team was up to in 2025? Here is our report!
The SCiDA Database: A Critical Resource
We are so happy that we have developed and expanded The SCiDA Database, an up-to-date collection of official documents related to digital markets regulation. The database comprehensively covers:
- The European Digital Markets Act (DMA)
- Section 19a of the German Competition Act (GWB)
- The UK Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA)
The database includes decisions, press releases, consultation documents, compliance reports, and other policy materials, enabling researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to access and analyse regulatory developments efficiently. We notice this in our daily work ourselves: Where is this document again that the legislator….. – just like a good platform, we reduce search and transaction costs. Users can optimise searches by pre-selecting categories and filtering results, making this an invaluable tool for anyone working on digital markets regulation. Birte Krüger, our SCiDA-Tech-Expert, has worked extensively on this, and our student assistants Anna Patzer and Zeinab Ansah helped to fill the database. Birte is also behind the SCiDA project’s digital presence with the SCiDA blog, ensuring that SCiDA’s research reaches and serves our audiences effectively. The database is accessible at database.scidaproject.com. We encourage researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to explore this resource and get back to us with feedback.
Team Transitions and New Voices
This year brought significant changes to the SCiDA team. In May, Jasper van den Boom moved from postdoc to Assistant Professor in record speed. Bad luck for the Düsseldorf SCiDA Team but a great career step for Jasper. He now works at Leiden University, but he remains an Associate of SCiDA and continues to collaborate on key research projects. Jasper’s contributions during his time with the project, setting it up, getting it going, and in particularly researching on DMA enforcement procedures and remedy design, have been foundational to our work.
In June, Kena Zheng joined the project in Düsseldorf, bringing expertise in comparative competition law and digital markets regulation. Kena successfully defended her PhD thesis at Maastricht University in June, receiving the distinction of cum laude for her work on “The Use of Competition Soft Law in Digital Markets: A Comparative Legal Analysis of China and the EU.” Her arrival has enriched our comparative perspectives, particularly regarding AI regulation and enforcement strategies across jurisdictions.
In September, Anush Ganesh joined SCiDA at Exeter University as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, transitioning from his role as Course Lead for LLM International Business Law and Lecturer in Law at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, to focus entirely on researching digital markets competition policy. Anush brought extensive expertise in abuse of dominance, pricing practices in digital markets, and comparative regulatory frameworks, immediately contributing to the project’s UK-focused research agenda.
In November, Pavlina Hubkova joined the Exeter team from Maastricht University, immediately making significant contributions to our policy engagement work, particularly on the crucial intersection of data protection and competition regulation in digital markets.
Major Publications and Research Outputs
Books and Monographs
Jasper van den Boom published his monograph Regulating Competition in the Digital Network Industry with Cambridge University Press, providing comprehensive analysis of regulatory approaches to digital platform competition. This substantial contribution establishes theoretical foundations for understanding network effects, market power, and regulatory design in digital markets.
Rupprecht Podszun co-edited the 5th edition of Kartellrecht (Kersting/Meyer-Lindemann/Podszun), a major German article-by-article commentary on competition law. He authored the comments on Section 19a GWB, Germany’s pioneering ex ante regulatory framework.
Journal Articles and Academic Contributions
The team produced an impressive array of peer-reviewed publications addressing critical issues in digital markets regulation:
Jasper van den Boom and Sarah Hinck analysed whistleblowing in DMA enforcement, addressing critical information gaps that challenge effective implementation. Jasper’s work with Rupprecht Podszun on non-compliance procedures in the DMA explores the European Commission’s discretionary space in enforcement, while his collaboration with Fiona Scott Morton on recalibrating Regulation 1/2003 proposes fundamental reforms to EU remedy design for digital markets.
Oles Andriychuk contributed theoretical depth with articles on competition law’s search for new rationale, the Digital Markets Act as regulatory compromise, and the emerging fairness doctrine in competition law. His work on EU industrial policy for digital markets addresses whether competition authorities possess the tools and expertise for the interventionist role digital regulation demands.
Kena Zheng published groundbreaking research on ‘Antitrust in Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure’ in Computer Law & Security Review, examining regulatory approaches across the EU, US, and China. Her work on regulation of digital markets with competition soft law provides law and economics perspectives on this emerging enforcement tool.
Sarah Hinck presented her research on ‘Technological Rule-Setting Power in Big Tech Ecosystems: Code is Law Revisited’ at prestigious conferences including ASCOLA (Chicago), the European Competition and Marketing Law Conference (where she received the best paper award), and other leading academic forums, advancing understanding of how technical architectures shape competitive dynamics and legal responses. Her work includes middleware as potential innovation blocker and the rise of FRAND criteria as competition law control mechanisms for private rule-setting.
Anush Ganesh published extensively on abuse of dominance in digital markets, with articles examining effective remedies, predatory pricing tests for platforms, and price personalization under Article 102 TFEU. His comparative work on convergence between competition law and constitutional rights with Krusha Bhatt, demonstrates the increasingly complex interplay between different legal frameworks. His critical analysis of India’s draft digital competition bill with Mohit Yadav and Gaurav Pathak contributes comparative perspectives on emerging regulatory approaches globally.
Collaborative Research
The team’s collaborative work demonstrates SCiDA’s strength in bringing together diverse expertise. The forthcoming article by Rupprecht Podszun, Oles Andriychuk, Jasper van den Boom, and Sarah Hinck on The Iterative Nature of Digital Regulation and the Role of Stakeholders: the DMA and DMCCA in the Journal of European Competition Law & Practice analyzes how stakeholder-driven enforcement shapes regulatory evolution.
Anush Ganesh, Jasper van den Boom, and Kena Zheng are awaiting review on The Hare and the Tortoise: Appraising the Different Designation Procedures in EU and UK Digital Regulation, providing comparative analysis of the DMA and DMCCA designation mechanisms. Jasper van den Boom, Anush Ganesh, and Sebastian Steinert examine the shift toward market investigation tools in their forthcoming work on cooperative competition law.
The team is preparing a comprehensive edited volume: Best Practices in Implementing and Enforcing Digital Regulation (Hart Publishing), featuring contributions from Rupprecht Podszun, Oles Andriychuk, Jasper van den Boom, Kena Zheng and Sarah Hinck that will provide comparative synthesis across the DMA, DMCCA, and Section 19a GWB.
Policy Engagement and Regulatory Impact
SCiDA’s commitment to shaping policy discourse was evident through substantial consultation responses:
DMA Review Consultation
In September, the team submitted comprehensive recommendations to the European Commission’s 2025 Review of the Digital Markets Act, proposing 29 specific recommendations to strengthen the regulatory framework. This consultation response, authored by Oles Andriychuk, Rupprecht Podszun, Kena Zheng (who coordinated the effort), Anush Ganesh, Sarah Hinck, and Jasper van den Boom, addressed designation procedures, AI, enforcement mechanisms, remedies, and the relationship between ex ante and ex post competition law.
DMA-GDPR Interplay
In December, the SCiDA team responded to the Joint Guidelines consultation on the interplay between the Digital Markets Act and the General Data Protection Regulation. This response, with Pavlina Hubkova in the driving seat, addresses one of digital regulation’s most complex challenges: how competition and data protection frameworks can work coherently to govern platform behaviour.
Blog Contributions and Public Engagement
The SCiDA blog remained a vital platform for timely analysis of regulatory developments. The team published 26 blog posts in 2025 bringing the total to 50 blogs in 2 years, covering major developments across the EU, UK, Germany, and beyond:
Anush Ganesh was quite active, authoring comprehensive analyses of the CMA’s Strategic Market Status designations for Google Search and Apple/Google mobile platforms, complete with detailed examinations of stakeholder responses. His conference debriefs from the UK Digital Markets Competition Regulation Forum and the Competition Law & AI Summit kept readers informed of academic and policy debates. His analysis of the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal’s Kent v Apple judgment assessed implications for UK digital markets regulation and class actions. Anush also provided crucial analyses of stakeholder consultation responses and the DMCCA’s implementation from January to August 2025.
Kena Zheng analysed the European Commission’s rapid launch of five AI investigations in November-December 2025, examining the Commission’s ex ante approach to emerging technologies and raising questions about the sufficiency of these interventions.
Sarah Hinck analysed the Regional Court of Berlin’s €465 million Google/Idealo decision, assessing its significance for private enforcement, Apple’s appeal hearing agains its designation under Sec. 19a GWB. Together with Jasper van den Boom, she also provided analysis of Booking.com’s compliance workshop, examining whether gatekeepers are genuinely addressing regulatory requirements.
Sebastian Steinert (who writes his PhD under the supervision of Rupprecht Podszun) provided crucial insights throughout the year, analysing the second round of DMA compliance reports and presenting the European Commission’s DMA decision against Meta’s “Pay or consent”-model. He also reported on the European Commission’s “Economics of the DMA” workshop and on the German-French Summit on digital sovereignty. His blog contributions helped readers gain a clearer understanding of the compliance developments under the DMA, their implications for digital markets, and the connection to the broader digital sovereignty agenda.
Rupprecht Podszun and Leon Wardelmann examined whether Europe can still enter the AI competition through their analysis of the AI Action Summit in Paris, while Monika Schnitzer and Rupprecht Podszun made the case for an independent EU enforcement agency in their piece arguing that Europe must stand strong on Big Tech.
We also featured distinguished guest authors: Behrang Kianzad contributed thoughtful analysis on operationalizing fairness in the proposed Digital Fairness Act, addressing how abstract principles can guide concrete regulatory action. Sangyun Lee provided a valuable comparative perspective with his assessment of Japan’s Smartphone Act (MSCA), examining this legislation in the shadow of competition law under-enforcement and offering insights into how different jurisdictions approach similar regulatory challenges. Juliane Mendelsohn evaluated the draft delegated act concerning the platform for the study of systemic risk under Article 40(4) DSA, providing technical analysis of data access rights.
The team collaborated on analyses of DMA compliance workshops, non-compliance decisions, gatekeepers’ one-year compliance assessments, and the DMCCA’s early implementation, providing accessible yet rigorous commentary on complex regulatory developments throughout the year.
Podcasts and Public Communication
The SCiDA Podcast
Anush Ganesh and Kena Zheng co-hosted 14 episodes of the SCiDA podcast between September and December 2025, with Jasper van den Boom occasionally joining as a guest. The podcast featured conversations with leading academics, policymakers, and experts on digital markets regulation, covering topics from the DMA review consultation and complexity science in digital markets to AI competition, generative AI’s impact on competition law, and press publisher rights. Notable guests included Thibault Schrepel on computational antitrust, Christian Bergqvist on Google’s global antitrust troubles, Shilpi Bhattacharya on India’s digital competition landscape, Madhavi Singh on the Stargate Project and AI innovation, Sangyun Lee on digital platform regulation in South Korea and Japan, Magali Eben on press publishers and the UK’s growth agenda, Viktorija Morozovaite on hypernudging and Europe’s tech future, Deni Mantzari on FRAND pricing in digital ecosystems, Alissa Cooper on Google Search remedies across jurisdictions, and Behrang Kianzad on the concept of ‘fairness’ in the DMA. The podcast aims to become an important platform for making complex regulatory issues accessible to broader audiences.
The Digital Markets Research Hub
Oles Andriychuk continued his prolific work on the Digital Markets Research Hub YouTube channel, which published 140 episodes by 2025 aiming to become a forum at which different stakeholders engage in a meaningful exchange.
Institutional Recognition and Leadership
Rupprecht Podszun’s appointment as co-chair of the Expert Commission on Competition and Artificial Intelligence, established by the German Ministry of Economics and Energy, recognizes his leadership in addressing AI’s competitive implications. His participation in the AI Action Summit in Paris 2025 positioned SCiDA perspectives in high-level policy discussions about Europe’s AI competitiveness. Rupprecht also serves as a member of the German Monopolies Commission, a government advisory body, where he often discusses competition policy in conferences, general media, or with politicians and officials.
Oles Andriychuk continues to shape academic discourse through his extensive editorial work and conference presentations, while Jasper van den Boom’s growing body of work on remedies and enforcement procedures, now from his position at Leiden University, positions him as a leading voice on practical implementation challenges.
Conference Presentations and Academic Engagement
SCiDA team members were active participants at leading academic conferences:
- ASCOLA (Chicago, June 2025): Kena Zheng and Sarah Hinck presented research on AI infrastructure regulation and technological rule-setting power respectively. Rupprecht Podszun’s term as ASCOLA President ended this year, but he will remain on the Board of ASCOLA.
- European Competition and Market Law Conference (2025): Sarah Hinck received recognition for her work with the Best Paper Award.
- Ius Commune Annual Conference (Amsterdam, November 2025): Kena Zheng presented on competition soft law’s uncertain legal effects.
- UK Digital Markets Competition Regulation and AI Forum(s) (2025): Anush Ganesh and Oles Andriychuk participated in the events hosted by Thought Leaders 4 Competition.
- Young Competition Law Conference (Florence): Sarah Hinck presented on ‘Monopoly of Middleware as Innovation Blocker’.
- Wirtschaftsprivatrechtliche Nachwuchstagung (Vienna): Sarah Hinck presented, together with Klara Dressselhaus, on the rise of FRAND criteria as a competition law control mechanism.
These presentations ensure SCiDA research reaches diverse academic and policy audiences, facilitating dialogue between theoretical analysis and practical implementation.
Looking Forward
As we enter 2026, several major projects are underway. The team continues work on comparative analyses of digital market regulation, identifying best practices and emerging principles. Jasper van den Boom is developing frameworks for effective remedy design from his position at Leiden, while Kena Zheng examines gatekeepers’ circumvention strategies and the Commission’s enforcement dilemmas. Anush Ganesh will continue to closely follow digital markets regulation and competition policy in the UK, EU and other jurisdictions, while Pavlina Hubkova examines the concept of fairness under the DMA from both multilingual and economic perspectives, and explores the role of innovation in the regulation of digital markets. Sarah Hinck will continue to explore private regulatory powers deeply embedded in the technological architectures of digital infrastructures and their implications for competition (law).
The Big Thing!
But first and foremost, all eyes are now on the big thing, the SCiDA 2026 Conference in Düsseldorf on 26-27 May 2026. Save the date! We already have a stellar line-up of experts, including heads of competition agencies and leading voices from academia and enforcement practice. The Call for Abstracts is still open till 18 January 2026. The SCiDA 2026 Conference will assess digital regulation’s first years and chart paths forward.
Conclusion
2025 has been a year of incredible developments in digital, in digital regulation, and – last but not least – the SCiDA team. We try to keep up with what is going on, and to shape the ways that decision-makers can pursue. With thrilling investigations and cases on-going, with new legislative initiatives, and ever new services in the field of digital we are looking forward to another exciting year.
But now, it’s time to take a short breather. We hope you enjoyed our contributions – please get in touch with us for feedback, ideas for cooperation and blogs, or simply a coffee (real or virtual). (Some of our team prefer tea, though).
We are looking forward to seeing you at the SCiDA 2026 Conference in Düsseldorf! All the best to you!
The SCiDA Team at Exeter and Düsseldorf
The SCiDA project is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) in cooperation with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the United Kingdom under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC 2130/1 – 390853824.
