The first private DMA enforcement judgment by a German appellate court has arrived, and it is about tying: the Higher Regional Court of Koblenz (Oberlandesgericht) has held that the Google Account sign-up design breaches Article 5(8) DMA by favouring Gmail in the process (U 851/25 Kart). The competing email providers GMX and Web.de obtained an […]
An Uphill Battle Ahead on Appeal? AG Biondi Delivers Opinion in Bytedance (C-627/24 P)
On 15 October 2026, AG Biondi delivered his Opinion in Bytedance v Commission (C-627/24 P). The case has been closely watched as the first DMA designation dispute to reach the CJEU. In this blog post, Ece Ban looks at the AG’s Opinion, the points where it diverges from and builds upon the GC’s reasoning, and what to watch for in the Court’s forthcoming judgment.
Navigating the Digital Competition Frontier: The SCiDA Team at ASCOLA 2026
The world of competition law is moving faster than ever, and there is no better place to track that momentum than the annual ASCOLA (Academic Society for Competition Law) conference. Held in London and hosted jointly by University College London (UCL) and Kings College London, this year’s event was the largest in the organization’s history with 160 […]
SCiDA Conference 2026 Day 2
The second and final day of the SCiDA Conference 2026 at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf opened with a frank interview with the former Chair of the CMA and closed with a reflection from AG Kokott that gave the assembled scholars, enforcers, and practitioners much to carry home. Where Day 1 had asked what digital competition […]
SCiDA Conference 2026 Day 1: Shaping Competition in the Digital Age
The first day of the SCiDA Conference at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf brought together competition law scholars, enforcers, and practitioners for a packed programme spanning digital regulation, AI, enforcement effectiveness, and the political dimensions of platform power. What follows is a summary of the key discussions across the day with some photos (more photos at the end). […]
DMA Compliance Reports in Year Three: Reading Between the (Many) Lines
The DMA gatekeepers have submitted their third cycle of compliance reports to the European Commission. While the surface-level documentation suggests a steady march toward alignment, a deeper dive reveals a more complex reality. Our SCiDA Team has carefully reviewed this year’s submissions to identify substantive progress and mere procedural posturing (see our analysis on 2025 compliance reports here). […]
Conference Debrief: Highlights from the Concurrences Innovation Ecosystem Conference
The Concurrences Innovation Ecosystem: Legal and Economic Perspectives Conference was held on 16 March 2026 at Kings College, London. The conference brought together senior competition practitioners, regulators, judges, and academics to discuss pressing issues in UK and EU competition law across panels on merger control reform, digital markets regulation, cartel enforcement, EU-UK cooperation, and class […]
Highlights from The Economist’s Antitrust Summit 2026
The Economist’s Antitrust Summit 2026, held on 26 February 2026 in City Hall, Westminster, brought together a formidable gathering of competition authority heads, senior regulators, practitioners, and industry representatives to take stock of the evolving global competition landscape. Co-chaired by Tamzin Booth, Editorial Director (B2B) at The Economist Group, and Jan Piotrowski, Finance and Economics […]
The Joint Guidelines on the Interplay between the DMA and the GDPR – an important step towards cross-disciplinary cooperation
By Belle Beems Assistant professors at Leiden University, Europa Institute, Department of Public Law. Following the ASCOLA declaration of interests, the author declares no conflicting interests. On 9 October 2025, the European Commission and the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) published a draft of their Joint Guidelines on the Interplay between the Digital Markets Act and […]
Japan’s Smartphone Act (MSCA)in the Shadow of Competition Law Under-Enforcement
Following the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), Japan has enacted a digital competition regulation (a form of sector-specific regulation that blends competition principles with prescriptive provisions, as Lazar Radic et al. 2024 describe) with a more targeted scope in the smartphone software ecosystem: the Mobile Software Competition Act (MSCA). This blog throws some light […]