IDC Podcast - Exploitative Abuses in Digital Markets

11 August, 2022 - Marco Botta is part-time Professor at the European University Institute (EUI), where he is the coordinator of the Florence Competition Programme (FCP) and ENTraNCE for Judges. In addition, he is Affiliated Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (MPI) in Munich (Germany). Finally, he is Adjunct Professor at the Law Faculty of the University of Vienna (Austria), where he teaches EU, competition and State aid law. Prof. Botta's most recent work (forthcoming) discusses the ‘revival’ of exploitative abuses in Europe. In particular, it analyses the legal test and recent enforcement trends concerning excessive and discriminatory pricing, as well as unfair trading conditions under Art. 102 TFEU. In digital markets, this revival of exploitative abuses has mostly concerned unfair trading conditions. In Prof. Botta's opinion, peculiarities of digital markets (i.e. close to zero marginal costs, winner takes all dynamics and zero-price markets) make hard for a competition agency to assess an excessive pricing case under United Brands test and the benchmarking approach.