EU Merger Control in the Digital Era: A Critical Analysis

Klein, Lilian (2024) EU Merger Control in the Digital Era: A Critical Analysis. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

The complexity of digital markets presents significant challenges to merger control. The general objective of this thesis is to critically analyse, from a new perspective, the EU Commission’s approach regarding digital mergers in the past and going forward. The entire thesis focuses on four challenges faced by the EU merger regime in digital markets, through the lens of acquisitions by GAMAM companies (Google, Apple, Meta/Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft). Accordingly, four challenges are identified: addressing “killer acquisitions” strategies; tackling data combination issues; dealing with privacy issues arising in mergers and; the future design of merger commitments, in light of the new DMA obligations.

The new perspective and originality of this work lie in the unique approach and methodology, which form the basis for critically analysing the Commission’s approach and achieving the research objectives. A GAMAM Mergers Database is constructed in order to objectively look at the evidence, and to select (assessed) mergers in order to scrutinise the adequacy of the Commission’s approach regarding each challenge. On the whole, the Database “drives” the critical analysis of the Commission’s approach to digital mergers, in the face of each of the four challenges. The novelty of this work is that it studies in-depth each of the four challenges within one piece of work, proposes approaches and frameworks, contributes novel insights and makes new findings.

This research is a significant contribution to the literature. Overall, this thesis finds the following. So far, the Commission inadequately dealt with GAMAM mergers, although some improvement has been taking place in certain respects. In order to draw these conclusions, in this work approaches and frameworks are developed and used as benchmarks against which to scrutinise the Commission’s assessment. Looking to the future, the DMA could reduce the EUMR’s power to design merger commitments.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Law
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	02 Sep 2024 08:56
Last Modified:	02 Sep 2024 08:56
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/96409
DOI:

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