EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS

Prague, Czechia

EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS 2022

could “help the parties overcome conflict and reach an agreement without the need for a strike” (Katsabian, 2021, p. 1038). Similarly, the mediation could be one of such mandatory steps before a “strike”. Consequently, neither party will rely on later assessment provided by the courts to find out if their conduct was “reasonable” (especially the “strikes” organized by the platform users). 6. Conclusion The paper discussed three main topics – the enforcement mechanisms of the P2B Regulation in the selected Member States, the shortcomings of the P2B Regulation, and existing civic activities and collective actions of business users against the platform providers. Analysis of the P2B Regulation enforcement mechanisms in the selected Member States showed that some of theMember States (the CzechRepublic, theNetherlands, and Italy) ensured or intend to ensure enforcement of the P2B Regulation by the administrative control and sanctions, while others (Germany and Finland) leave enforcement to the courts through the actions of the competitors, organizations, etc. Some additional duties imposed by the Member States may be inspiring for the others – for example, the enrolment of platform providers in the register in order to have an overview of controlled providers, or the mandatory annual contribution for financing the administrative costs of the supervisory authorities. As the P2B Regulation is the first legislative act in the field of platform regulation, the paper pointed out its shortcomings. It was emphasised that the transparency duties in the differentiated treatment is too narrow and should include all the business entities acting on the platforms. In addition, the internal complaint handling system should be mandatory not only for platforms providers (providers of online intermediation services), but also for online search engine providers in order to apply the complaints more effectively by the corporate website users. Drawing on Di Porto and Zuppeta, the paper suggested introducing algorithmic disclosure co-regulation. According to this suggestion, the cooperation of stakeholders of the platform could improve for instance transparency of main ranking parameters and show the results in more user-friendly and understandable format and content. Finally, the paper summarized the improvements of the P2B Regulation in the Digital Act proposal regarding to the duties of the gatekeeper platforms. In the final part, the study focuses on the civil actions and collective bargaining of business users. Among the marginal trend of the outflow of users from dominant platforms, there are several protests of business users against platforms with the most common aim to reach better pay and working conditions. The study reviewed the case-law of the Court of Justice and concludes that the Court has not

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