EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS

Editor’s preface: How to measure the EU’s anti-trust temperature through one international conference The organisers of the two-day international conference entitled EU Antitrust Hot Topics and Next Steps, held in January 2022 in Prague at the Faculty of Law of Charles University, had two ambitions from the outset. The first was to attract a wide range of international participants to Prague, led by European Commission Vice-President and Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager. The second was to develop a discussion that would offer those interested in competition policy and law high quality and interesting information, views, and ideas from the field. Unfortunately, the pandemic COVID-19 interfered with the fulfilment of these ambitions. The conference had to be held in a hybrid format, and although the organisers were able to welcome Vice-President Vestager, many participants from other countries chose to participate only online, and many apologies for non-participation were received – for health reasons – on the first day of the conference. The discussion at the conference therefore undoubtedly suffered, as the interaction between participants at a distance and on-site wearing respirators could never be as lively and immediate as open face-to-face meetings usually allow. It is therefore all the more significant and valuable that the papers presented at the conference both directly and remotely can be published together in one volume. The confrontation of views can thus continue in a certain way and include those interested in the field who did not attend the conference. And it is clear from the composition and, of course, from the very content of the contributions published in the proceedings you are holding in your hands that the ambition to bring views and ideas to the debate on the present and future of EU antitrust has been largely successful. A cursory glance at the contents of the proceedings suggests that there is a lot to be learned about the „hot topics“ and „next steps“ of EU competition law and policy. If we were to ask ourselves now what hot topics the EU competition policy and law is currently addressing or will address in its next steps (including in the semester in which the Czech Republic will hold the EU Council Presidency), the conference and its proceedings would offer the following order. 1. By far the largest number of contributions, at least 17 in these proceedings papers, are devoted to different perspectives to issues that could be summarized under the composite title Digitalization – BigTech – platforms – sharing of data and networks. The biggest hot topic is therefore the technological challenge that is changing not only business but also its legal framework, including competition law. The question of how far traditional concepts fit the new realities, how far they need to be reinterpreted, and how far they need

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