We need regulation as the state needs to assert itself against unlimited corporate power.

But we got super carried away with “fairness and contestability” and “levelling the playing field” as if we could really hope to counter gatekeeping power AND this was the key to beating them down AND creating European mini champions. We can’t. We can induce a little bit more fairness in their dealing w dependants, a little bit more “presence” on their platforms, but no amount of hopeful academic blah blah can hide the fact that we will not disperse their power nor create European digital champions nor put many points on European GDP in this way.

What should SMEs expect? Yes they should be making their voice heard via their national authority, they don’t have to go all the way to Brussels. BUT they also cannot be the problem solvers for the enforcers. They cannot be the ones expected to engage in submissions and toing and froing. They don’t have the resources, except for a few that are larger (sometimes rent seekers and therefore willing to invest in advisors). It has to be up to the Commission and the Member States to be regulators and set rules – in a way that is direct and directional, no “participative” nonsense. Gatekeepers have very clear incentives and shareholder value to pursue, it’s dumb to say “they are maliciously complying”! They are doing what they must do. This is dumb. Plutes are gonna plute, regulators gotta regulate.

My third point is think more broadly. The oxygen has been sucked out of every other intellectual debate in Europe by academic fandom for the DMA. Fine by all means support it but this mono-rail obsession, this unconditional cheerleading based on very naïve views of how businesses work, has been detrimental to broader thinking. Enforcement is all but suspended n Europe (no new cases) “because DMA”. We have not thought about anything else we could do as well. We are at a pivotal point where we need a digital industrial policy and that means PUBLIC GOOD INVESTMENT in digital infrastructure. There are examples: Taiwan, India, Brazil, also Europe. What are we doing? Francesca Bria Audrey Tang Robin Berjon and many more…