UK vs EU: Diverging Roads in Digital Regulation

With the CMA having recently published its provisional designation decision and roadmap for possible interventions in respect of Google Search and Search Advertising, now is a good moment to take stock of how the UK and EU are diverging in their approaches to regulating Big Tech. 

I recently spoke to Competition partner Jonathan Slade about how the UK’s new digital markets competition regime under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 is shaping up, and how it contrasts with the EU regime under the Digital Markets Act. In the podcast we explore a range of topics, including:

• Why the CMA has published its provisional decision and roadmap and what it says – Jonathan explains that the main purpose of the document is to provide the CMA’s provisional decision on the scope of the Google services that will be designated under the UK regime, which will in turn set the boundaries of the services on which the CMA can impose conduct requirements.  A particularly interesting aspect of the provisional decision is that the CMA considered whether Google’s Gemini AI assistant should form part of Google’s general search service (insofar as users ask it for information). As part of the CMA’s attempt to deliver predictability under the regime (one of the CMA’s ‘4Ps’) it has also included a ‘roadmap’ of possible conduct requirements for Google Search and Search Advertising, which proposes a phased approach to interventions in Google’s general search service.
   
• Key differences between the UK and EU regimes – We examine the key differences in the way the UK regime has been structured as compared to the EU regime, and the advantages and disadvantages that arise from these differing approaches.
   
• The impact of national and global politics – We discuss the impact of the UK political climate on the CMA’s approach, as well as the extent to which global politics, and in particular the rhetoric from the US on European regulation of Big Tech, has impacted the approaches taken in the UK and EU.