FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 15, 2023 

CONTACT: Max von Thun, vonthun@openmarketsinstitute.org 

Open Markets & Allies Submit New Recommendations on UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill (DMCCB) 

Recent, industry-driven amendments to the bill weaken enforcement & should be reversed

LONDON - The Open Markets Institute, Foxglove, and Balanced Economy Project have provided a civil society submission on the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill (DMCCB), as the bill moves to the House of Lords for further debate

As with Open Markets’ initial testimony, in this submission we welcome the DMCCB as an ambitious piece of legislation that will ensure the UK remains at the forefront of international efforts to rein in dominant tech giants and inject competition into digital markets.  

In this new submission with partners Foxglove and Balanced Economy Project, we call for targeted improvements to make the bill more effective and less susceptible to evasion by tech giants, in particular by eliminating the “countervailing benefits exemption” for SMS firms entirely.  

We also call on legislators to reverse a number of unhelpful amendments adopted under pressure from Big Tech and which would significantly undermine the CMA’s ability to enforce the legislation. 

The submission reads:  

“The recent history of competition enforcement has highlighted the shortcomings of traditional antitrust law in tackling digital monopolies, while demonstrating how dominant corporations make aggressive use of legal exemptions, ambiguities and loopholes to stifle enforcement and overwhelm under-resourced regulators. It is crucial that the DMCCB – which is itself a response to these historic failures – does not make the same mistakes.” 

This June, Open Markets Europe Director Max von Thun gave oral evidence in the UK Parliament on the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill (DMCCB) and submitted on behalf of Open Markets detailed written evidence on the DMCCB. 

Read Submission Here 

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