A draft communication by the European Commission on Online Platforms and the Digital Single Market has suggested that new legislation may be needed to ensure that fair trading practices are applied to small companies that become dependent on online platforms.
This draft policy paper indicates that smaller companies could be disproportionately exposed to unfair trading practices, which could threaten innovation even in the absence of established dominance by Competition rules. In this sense, the Commission suggests that these problems may be better addressed by an EU regulation rather than by Competition enforcement.
For the following six months the Commission intends to gather more information on this issue and to closely study the sector with a view to decide in spring 2017 whether further action is indeed necessary.
Five priorities have been identified: (i) potential unfair terms and conditions, especially if platforms effectively constitute the access point to important user or data bases; (ii) platforms acting as an authority in refusing or unilaterally modifying market access conditions; (iii) platforms unfairly promoting their own services to the disadvantage of other suppliers; (iv) the dual role of platforms, in scenarios where platforms carry out transactions for a supplier and at the same time compete with it; and (v) the potential lack of transparency on platform tariffs, use of data and search results.
