ofthewedge

Notes by the Chair

8.15am Cristina’s intro

[Welcome] A personal note. I started this conference in this ballroom over 15 years ago. We had the first EC Chief Economist, was all about the “more economic approach”. For 10 years it was titled “Economic Developments in Competition Law” (so boring), with indistinguishable panels on mergers, Art. 102, exegesis of Court decisions (“by object and by effect”), cartels and damages. And then gradually from 2018 I started asking “wait, what are we doing with this more economic approach? Is concentration rising? do we have a problem? what is going on with digital platforms?” – accelerating in 2020 with “Time of Upheaval”, “Disrupted times”, “The Political Economy”… now “the NEXT WORLD ORDER”.

Incomprehension / consternation in the Antitrust Bubble “WHAT IS CRISTINA TALKING ABOUT – we know what we are doing, we apply COMPETITION LAW, we just need some USEFUL TAME ECONOMISTS to do our submissions & tell the regulator it’s all efficient and procompetitive. What we are doing is PURE. It’s technical. We are specialists. We know our stuff. We don’t want to contaminate this PURE THING with POLITICS! We DECIDED antitrust in Europe was an objective science and to be practiced by technocrats, not politicians!”

Every few decades the political economy gets to a point, and then the pendulum swings. It was clear to me by 2018 we were coming to the end of that era. There were voices saying wait, what we are doing is not right – Lina Khan spoke HERE in 2018, Barry Lynn came to Brussels when what he was saying on market power was really thought to be radical and dangerous – “these New Brandeisians are the mad populist fringe, we know what we are doing over here”

The world has kept hurtling through crises at crazy speed – just skirting mass extinction through disease, planet is boiling, WAR and genocide on our doorstep, inflation, ….and masses of inequality, unfairness, exploitation, surveillance. It’s clear the classic neoliberal consensus (consumer welfare, efficiency, no barriers, trickle down economics) has run its course. PEOPLE are restless. They want to be seen as citizens and workers, not just consumers, want attention to people and planet, to justice, to growth that is more equal and fair, democracy. This is a massive shift – no longer a fringe view, we understand that POWER EXISTS in the REAL WORLD. And ANTITRUST matters because it is a critical “check” to capital, that pre-empts concentration and protects economic freedoms for everyone not just for corporates.

This shift has happened in the US where antitrust regulators have revived flagging antitrust along this agenda: more fairness, more equality, stop concentration of power. And it is a shift which is also connected to other shifts in industrial policy and trade: all these regulatory realms – trade, industrial policy, antitrust, privacy – they ALL intersect. The common theme is that EFFICIENCY IS OVER. As the lodestar of what we do, in multiple fields.

So we have a European election in June and one in November in the US, I continue to find it extraordinary that people who work in antitrust think this is nothing to do with them. The question is what should the agenda be for antitrust, and trade, and industrial policy, to reboot economic growth which is flagging in Europe, to reindustrialise, to muscle up the economies in ways that are fairer.

= DO NOT THINK antitrust has nothing to do with this. It has a lot to do with this. But we need to broaden out. So the DMA is not an economic policy alone, it is one piece of it. Taming tech giants is not going to put points on GDP even if getting them to behave more fairly matters.

The US regulators we are going to hear today have been part of an “all of government” approach, and they are connecting the dots. Khan, Tai, Kanter, Chopra, Boushey. What if Trump wins? Much of this is centrist and bipartisan actually. What is the vision for the next 4/5 years?

8.20-8.50am: Rebooting the Next Commission

Fireside with Olivier Guersent and Andreas Schwab

Theme of today is what we want for the NEXT Commission. So no retrospective. Just forward looking.

Let’s start NOT from digital for a change. One big theme in the post-neoliberal pendulum swing is to say we’ve gone too far with efficiency/lowering trade barriers/offshoring which have hollowed European industrial capacity, we need reindustrialisation, creating capacity in Europe, sovereignty, resilience etc. Competition (and state aid rules) have been a sacred cow. “We need to defend against bad national champions, we need to really allow for state investment only if there are market failures and if intervention improves efficiency”. Is this still fit for purpose? The Letta Report anticipated a couple of weeks ago said we need to rethink state aid rules (too much fixation on “efficiency”) in the face of the massive emergencies for Europe. There’s a huge discussion of “new industrial policy”, we will hear later today from White House. Isn’t this of the things we need to rethink: how can competition support this effort in the next 5 years? Or is it business as usual, same tests, same IPCEI examples?

Amazon/iRobot. Aside from the theory of harm (“protecting competition in robot cleaners”) that seems a bit dumb to me, does it mean more generally we’ve come to the end of the line for Big Tech deals? Is this the message – if it is, I agree with it – but is it what we think it means? Merger control is super powerful to control allocation of assets before it is too late. In a world in which we had to pivot to the DMA to try and do something about power and concentration of Big Tech ex-post, is this saying “look, enough, we learned the lessons and now go invent something but honestly you don’t need to own a robot cleaner”. Hasn’t the error cost assessment (Type 1 vs Type 2) error radically changed in the current world? Is this the message companies should finally take up?

“DMA 2.0” – we all know it’s being implemented etc, don’t want to talk about that process, but about what comes next. First what’s not covered – the designation covered the low hanging fruit, but then? Cloud, AI, what are we doing about that?  Do we need new law or is it a matter of applying the current law?

What is the agenda for the next Commission?  

8.50-9.50am “From Price to Power”? Reorienting Antitrust for the New Political Economy

Andreas Mundt

Luigi Zingales

Tommaso Valletti

Rebecca Slaughter

Gina Cass-Gottlieb

We’ll continue the theme. We are in a world of emergencies. Antitrust can be a little island populated by technocrats who say we have THE LAW, we have our technical rules, we have models and techniques, all these ideas about abandoning the true religion of consumer welfare and orthodoxy mean making antitrust political, we need it to be neutral. First, is it true we are neutral and apolitical in our current posture. Second, how does enforcement adapt and reflect the way the world around us evolved? We have been worrying only about PRICE – as long as prices go down that’s good, but then we have seen power rising massively and now we worry about POWER, the control over markets, inequality, distribution, democracy. Markets are now much more concentrated, industrial capacity has been removed through serial deals in key sectors, we are the target of extractive digital monopolies which keep expanding their ecosystems in all directions, not to mention the polycrises which have exposed massive fragilities and led to inflation flareups etc. What we are seeing are major paradigm shifts in the US, ALSO in antitrust.  This is a huge deal.

Luigi: is what we are doing today pure and not political, is efficiency a pure and a-political goal. Should antitrust be a neutral technocratic endeavour? Is there “purity” in antitrust? When we talk about New Brandeis, and the interest for “power, not price”, what has changed?

Tommaso: economists have weighed into antitrust with the “more economic approach” successful campaign, but we ended up as a narrow church preoccupied with what we pretend to be a pure and technocratic endeavour. How do we shake the profession from oblivion, how do we think about “power” vs “price” as the goal. Mention “Economists are a tribal clique” Christine Lagarde

Andreas – How do you think of this, How is the focus and the posture changing with the political economy? can obviously talk about examples from the update of the German Law and your enforcement focus. But also more broadly you are President of ICN. Surely there is appetite e.g. from the Global South for more engagement on the bigger issues.

Rebecca: The FTC has been at the forefront of a major reinvigoration of antitrust in the US. Yes, digging out the “original animating values” but also a very “fierce sense of urgency” things had been allowed to flag in the past and a major shakeup was needed. Using agency powers to do much more.

Gina: You are in the midst of major battles to reform merger law in Australia, with much resistance, claims enforcement will curb growth etc. I understand under your voluntary regime 2/3 of deals are never reported – a huge proportion. Yet it seems you are facing considerable struggle and constraints to drive through a different posture/rules in Australia.

9.50-10.10 Are the Courts Likely to Listen? Conversation with Marc Van Der Woude and Sir Marcus Smith

Marc, in Lisbon you talked about the “new orientation” blowing through antitrust and how are the courts to position themselves there. In the US the courts have been thought of as a major source of resistance – having been indoctrinated at the Manne and Scalia Schools. Yet there are amazing signs some change is appening: judgment in airline cases (JetBlue-AA/Jetblue/Spirit), Illumina/Grail, IQvia in digital advertising. Are the courts in Europe hearing the drums coming from the hills? Inevitably they are somewhat behind, for instance the embrace of AECT in 2022 when we are now questioning it as a pro-defendant test (latest article from Massimo Motta essentially saying it is very problematic) … What is your sense for how the Courts are looking at this whole major evolution.

I know one answer is “The agencies set the direction on policy, we apply the law”. Well yes, but you make precedent. And the interpretation of the law is not immutable right? Surely the Courts and judges do think what they are doing is not immune from the political economy around. You live in the political economy. So how open you might be to arguments on concentration for example is not just a function of thinking GUPPIs is all there is to know…

10.10-11.00 Market Power Dysfunctions: Seller Inflation, Inequality &
AI Acceleration

Isabella Weber

Jan Eeckout

Gabriel Zucman

Florian Ederer

Doha Mekki

Much clearer focus on the threat posed by concentration itself, by market power itself, in all its manifestations – discrimination, inequality, exploitation, loss of voice and ultimately threat to democracy. THIS is the message: ladies and gentlemen, forget the quaint European tradition that we worry about “conduct that abuses market power, not about market power” – WRONG! We are VERY worried about market power (and concentration) because it engenders all sort of problems. In turn, there are phenomena in the economy that we do not recognise typically as associated with antitrust, BUT have a lot to do with market power! So what gives. Antitrust needs to be cognisant of these, and enforcement in this environment needs to be also alert to these. “We are not a silo”.

Doha to start by comment on the previous panel and the change in antitrust enforcement posture. Also mention the change in posture is also notching up some recent successes, judges may be “getting it” at last. See Jetblue/Spirit.

Isabella: tonne to say about the inflation debate still raging out there!! We wont have time to go into the full glory of the macroeconomist battles on interest rates, causes and cures for inflation. Focus on your diagnosis that some of the inflationary pressure we have seen has been caused by firms “profit taking” at a time when prices were rising for other reasons. Please do explain what is your theory about the mechanism at play here (is it a form of tacit collusion?). And the empirical validation for your story (I know you have gathered much evidence of execs expressing their intent to do this, spoken to many governments and central banks about this around the world).

Gabriel: your Global Taxation Report has been out recently and I want you to explain the main findings and message: that tax evasion by the top of the multinational companies ($1,000 billion or so in profit shifted to tax havens each year globally) is exacerbating both concentration and inequality – again explain the mechanism to an audience of non-economists and regulators, and what it means for distribution and again why it is related to market power.

Jan: I will link back to your seminal work on markups and concentration, and then ask you to talk about how you are looking at the other big phenomenon of 2023, the massive acceleration of AI, and how it amplifies the concerns you highlighted previously as associated with concentration: how it will affect inequality of income and wealth – directly and by increasing superstar earnings, which are directly linked to market power. Also draw the line between inequality and the political order, via the influence of big corporations on politics, but also via the polarization of the many who feel left out and the mushrooming populism. 

Florian: how come all the interesting work in economics now comes from outside IO. This panel is clear evidence. Explain why IO is pretty much dying. Then talk about your work on common ownership which is pervasive in the economy, and the fact that it is (a) super interesting but (b) not recognized enough by the IO church as not “in the orthodoxy”. This insularity and narrowness is not helpful to enforcement either.

Back to Doha: these top economists are making something painfully clear to us in the antitrust world: the “efficiency” framework is extremely narrow and misses a lot of what is threatening our sense of being citizens, of justice, and our democracy. This is not lost on enforcers and why you and Jon Kanter at the Justice department talk about democracy. Talk to us about that.

11.10-12.00 Industrial Policy Revisited: 
Sovereignty, Resilience, Competitiveness & Innovation

Nathan Lane

Ufuk Akgicit

Rene Repasi

Heather Boushey

This panel is intended to bring out how antitrust is also challenged by the new thinking around industrial policy. Traditional posture has been industrial policy was simply “unmentionable” in the US. In Europe it has been essentially synonymous with bad national champions, and the role of antitrust limited to state aid assessment: does state support cure a specific market failure, is it the right instrument? We are now in a polycrisis world, in which we have seen values of sovereignty and resilience become critical, in which there are major concerns about European competitiveness. It has become clear that state investment will be critical to directing effort towards goals not otherwise achievable by market forces. In parallel there is new economic thinking around industrial policy.

The purpose of this panel will be to wake up an oblivious antitrust audience to the notion that an effective industrial policy is plainly essential if we are to direct the big investments we need to address the problems of our times – loss of capacity, withered supply chains, de-industrialization, dependencies from rogue states. As Rana Foroohar puts it: the return of industrial policy isn’t the dog, but the tail. It follows a fundamental need, which is for governments to take on what used to be called “negative externalities” of the neoliberal market system — namely, inequality, climate change, financial instability and the resulting political polarization — all of which threatens capitalism and liberal democracy itself. We need industrial policy because markets simply don’t always know best. That’s Joe Stiglitz 101. THEN — you get into the fact that not all industrial policy is created equal. Nearly every major economy with the exception of the US, until quite recently, has had one. So what are best practices? What should we avoid and encourage? And crucially for this conference, how can we avoid falling into the national champions trap, even as we try to build capacity for production as well as consumption in different regions? 

Nathan starting off explaining what the New Industrial Policy thinking is, what is the new empirical evidence for what works and does not work, what are the policy prescriptions. AND how does one indeed avoid falling into the national champions trap?

Ufuk to elaborate on key insights (from his book w JVR) on how do we power growth – including not just the Global North but also the Global South. Innovation is the engine for growth, but how do we influence it? How can Europe get itself out of its current predicament of low wage and productivity growth?

Heather would explain the progress made by the Biden WH to actively launch policies to support specific goals, thinking and outcomes: rebuilding capacity for critical industries, etc. “Industrial strategy”. Also what’s the response to the view this is American protectionism?

Rene to comments on whether he thinks EUROPEAN antitrust policy is too much beholden to narrow state aid controls, with their “efficiency” obsession. Note Enrico Letta, former Prime Minister of Italy, just authored a report for the Commission saying inter alia exactly this: We need to upend this narrow state aid, give the perspective of law makers: we need to power up industrial policy, but also move beyond the narrow State Aid framing. Again, though, how do we resist the bad National Champions?

12.00 – 12.45 – Connecting Trade and Competition in the Next World Order
Conversation with Trade Ambassador Katherine Tai

Franziska Brantner

James Hodge

Another area where a major rethink is unfolding is trade. We are also here moving away from the neoliberal paradigm of hyperglobalisation, widely open markets and “efficiency” ad the goal, towards a new paradigm in which trade rules are not just designed to protect big corporate interests abroad, with capital and goods being completely mobile and relying on a “trickle down” fantasy to support the masses. The thinking is that trade must complement domestic policy and support the effort to protect against monopolies at home which have increased inequality and threaten democracy. It must work alongside antitrust and industrial policy to help re-industrialise, reduce dependencies and support the middle classes as a defence against Far Right and authoritarianism. This is URGENT in the run up to elections. At the same time, the Global South is raising its voice and needs to be included in shaping the post-neoliberal order.

Katherine:

This US administration has been reviving its antimonopoly effort, and explicitly rejected efficiency goals in all areas of economic policy. You have been nominated as part of the President’s Competition Council – how do you, as Trade representative, fit into this broader domestic antimonopoly effort – particularly with Big Tech? (need to sync trade and domestic policy, touch also on JSI and why you neutralised the US position at the WTO)

Follow up:

Expand out of Big Tech into the broader economy – the pandemic brought home the issue of brittle and broken supply chains, and that’s also been a major focus of the administration (rebuilding capacity at home) – again how does Trade fit into this? (opportunity to explain to European audience: what is being done differently from the past, why this is a important for building out the middle classes, why it is centrist and not partisan, why it is not just American protectionism, why it is a place where you see commonalities with the Global South)

Franziska:

For Europe, following the pandemic the invasion of Ukraine has been a further wake up call that economic dependencies create major vulnerabilities. Europe experienced deindustrialisation which also makes us vulnerable. You have been vocal on the need to move away from efficiency and rebuild domestic industry, and rethink trade as a major part of this. Give us your views on this, including how competition/antitrust should assist this effort in Europe in the next mandate. Need to find common democratic ground against the rise of authoritarianism, and economic coercion. More generally a key soundbite or two about vision for next Commission.

James, two topics:

What is the current view in South Africa (and others in the Global South) on the way trade rules have played out so far in structuring markets? (Talk to how the tariff moratorium has facilitated global dominance and removed a key lever in promoting digital industrialisation for the Global South, so need to consider how trade policy is affecting market structure and capabilities globally and locally. Tariffs may also provide other levers for affecting structure and building competition. Is there a risk that that developing countries may be victims of a shift in the Global North to protectionism and rebuilding industrial capacity?)

Moving to competition policy, you never did buy into efficiency as a goal!

Round of final comments:

To Katherine: Why are Europeans not so clear about what you are doing – there seems to be confusion.

All: Vision for the next 4-5 years. Commonalities – build up industrial strength domestically without protectionism, reduce dependencies, reduce inequality, build up the middle classes in defence of democracy and against authoritarianism. CHANGE IS HARD, so there is much resistance, but needs to happen!

12.45-1.30 “The Great Reordering”: Rohit Chopra in conversation w Rana Foroohar, with comments from Barry Lynn and Stephanie Yon-Courtin

We are in a paradigm shift. As Rana Foroohar says, “The capital-labor balance has swung too far away from workers. Corporate concentration has reached Gilded Age levels. Corruption is rife and trust in the market system is falling. This slows growth and increases instability… it’s quite clear at this point that the Washington Consensus and “market always knows best” ideas haven’t worked as well as we’d hoped in areas like trade, climate, labor standards. We are opening a new era focused not on growth for its own sake, but rather sustainable and equitable growth (meaning planet and people). Rather than consumers, we are focusing on citizens. This is a post-neoliberal, post-colonial paradigm that works not just for the US, but for the world. At the center of the post-neoliberal era is antitrust — deconstructing power and spreading wealth, by sector, geography, and socioeconomic profile, is key to maintaining liberal democracy and capitalism. We will examine how Bidenomics strives to do this, how it works at home and abroad, and how the US is attempting, in large part through the competition and trade paradigm, to spread it to Europe and the Global South”.

Rana to chair and speak this session – explain your “Great Reordering” vision first!

Rohit – connect the dots on the need to get real about how markets really function.

Barry – vision for what the agenda for the next 5 years should be.

Stephanie – explain how the European Parliament wants to see competition being much more activist on concentration, mergers, data; crucial discussion of the need to reindustrialise Europe, sovereignty, and trade policy. In particular, the Parliament has pushed a much more active stance on mergers, including killer acquisitions and ecosystem concerns;  the Parliament has demanded a much more engaged focus on data in antitrust; the Parliament  has pushed through legislation on content moderation and market power of tech giants, at record speed; the Parliament is are also very engaged in the notion that Europe needs to abandon efficiency as the goal, powering up instead industrial capacity domestically, pursuing sovereignty, innovation and green objectives. Competition is part of this mix but we should think of it against the new political economy – because it has not delivered much. So the message is: The Parliament is impatient, wants to see results, it is watching how the DMA is being implemented very carefully. And it is thinking of what next. What should be the agenda for the next Commission not just for digital but for the competition and industrial policy more broadly?

14.10-14.30 Commissioner Reynders address

Cristina’s prep notes:

As general orientation, this conference is about more than antitrust – we have entered a crucial election year for multiple jurisdictions (and a total mess on our hands…) so the real underlying theme is what should be the agenda for the next 5 years (Commission, Europe) and the next 4 years (US) and more broadly? We are re-orienting a lot of our thinking: citizens and workers, not just consumers, people and planet, growth that is more equal and fair, DEMOCRACY.

So why is Cssr Reynders coming to talk about data at an antitrust event?

– First of all, in terms of principles: the use of data to manipulate through tailored discriminatory treatment of individual citizens and firms is a fundamental violation of JUSTICE. This is why he is here and he matters.

– And second, antitrust comes in because the ability to collect and get value from data is a function of market power. Manipulation techniques, dark patterns, keeping people in your walled gardens, making it easy to be tracked and virtually impossible to avoid being tracked, it is almost impossible to compel a company to delete your data – this is how big powerful digital companies are able to accumulate more data than anyone else, often claiming that they have acquired a person’s ‘consent’. It is not only consumers, but also workers on the gig economy whose right to access data collected about them is so hard to exercise. Needless to say that the most vulnerable groups in society are also the most vulnerable to exploitation of their data. And that is just exploiting data collection on big tech’s own inventory.

– Further, market power also enables them to them to strike deals with almost all other companies with an internet presence – which individuals cannot control – whereby data from an individual’s use of apps, games, VPNs, websites etc are automatically shared with mysterious multiple “partners, vendors and third parties”. Market power enables them to prevent transparency and audits of their data practices, to the extent that most advertisers have no idea whether their ad spend is effective. It is also market power that enables a company to deploy limitless resources, whether lobbying or litigation, to avoid or defer indefinitely enforcement. Scale and reach enable them to capture and distort the narrative – pretending that the issue is (1) whether or not to receive ‘targeted ads’, rather than the individual’s right to be in control of their own profile, their own data or (2) ‘cookie fatigue’ when the real issue is whether such data should be harvested in the first place.

They can use their power to claim that data is no longer personal data over which a person has fundamental rights, but rather anonymised and aggregated and a business secret – that is, their property; this is becoming a particularly acute challenge in the age of generative AI and LLMs, which are build on the scraping of 100s of terabytes of data from the web.

So the risk is that those with the power and means to protect their data and privacy will do so – paying a premium to use a particular service, for example; meanwhile the majority are trapped in business models which rely on the monetisation of their data in order to access the service.

When the GDPR states in Art 5, as the first principle of data protection, that personal data mush be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject , it is a recognition that imbalances of power have the potential to severely hamper an equitable upholding of rights and obligations. Fairness is a core concern of competition enforcement, and in todays digitalised economy this naturally includes fairness of data processing

BIG FINALE! Corporate power, structure, behaviour issues related to data should not be decided within a consumer welfare framework but a democracy and justice framework!

14.30–14.50 Fireside with DOJ AAG Jonathan Kanter

You use the word “democracy” a lot in your talks. Why? What are some of the ways concentration of power and control threatens democracy?

You’ve often spoken of the need to use different language when speaking to the public, to democratize antitrust, to speak to judges in plainer language, about power and democracy. how is this working?

Tell us about how your approach to antitrust is expressed in the new Merger Guidelines.

Last week you had a big win in court, blocking the Jetblue/Spirit merger, why is this important?

Everyone is talking about AI. and for good reasons, but what’s your take? Is AI a monopoly problem do you see ai as something new and distinct, that needs an some sort of special set of regulations? or do you see ai mainly as amplifying and accelerating existing concentrations of power and existing monopoly harms? Are you looking at specific actions that would strike at the nexus of ai and monopoly power? such as separating cloud capacities and data in the aggregate from the platforms? What have you learned from your 2 google cases on the intersection of ai and the monopoly power and behavior of the platforms? potential opportunity here?

In 2019, antitrust was a very specialized and compartmentalized topic. today we see US TradeR Representative Tai and European Justice Commissioner Reynders and CFPB Chair chopra and FTC Chair Khan all taking part with you in a single discussion about broader political economic outcomes. Why is this important? What role did the “whole of government” concept play in breaking down the old silo walls?

Next year we may enjoy another opportunity to drive transformative change. What are one or two of your top priorities for the next four years?

14.50-15.45  Antitrust as Agent for Change

Sarah Cardell

Benoit Coeure’

Nuno Rodrigues

John Newman

Aviv Nevo

As those present on the day will experience, the gist of the entire day is to stir a European antitrust audience into understanding that antitrust is not an island, needs to work alongside other economic policy tools, not to isolate itself as a technocratic discipline immanent to the changes in the world around us. I hope to drill the message throughout the day that antitrust is a key area of economic policy for deconstructing power and spreading wealth, by sector, geography, and socioeconomic profile, is key to maintaining liberal democracy and capitalism. It is there to check market power which leads to inequality and ultimately threatens democracy (see earlier panels). The notion of “efficiency” as “the goal” is now being challenged in all areas of economic policy (see earlier discission with Ambassador Tai et al on trade); yet “efficiency” had been the lodestar of antitrust, where do we stand on this? The US agencies have been vocal on their broader mission to attack monopoly power and be sceptical of “efficiency” as the goal. Of course there is massive pushback to this as companies and their advocates say “this is the law” and try to defer any change.

This is a panel of senior enforcers (John just stepped down), and I would like to hear an earnest discussion not so much of agency priorities but a reflection on

How the speakers see antitrust fitting in this paradigm shift, alongside other “adults in the room” (trade and industrial policy) which we need to have involved to help the economy grow and reduce dependencies. Antitrust has traditionally been a bastion of resistance against industrial policy for instance – bad national champions, picking losers etc. But there’s a big discussion on industrial policy, and the absolute need to power it up – decarbonise to prevent inflationary shocks for instance. How does one think of the tradeoffs in this new world.

Also, for all: What should the agenda for the 4-5 years look like? What should be on it? Digital regulation has taken a HUGE amount of calories in Europe. The UK is coming round eventually. How is that going in your view? What else should be the agenda?

Sarah – eventful year, lots of irons in the fire at the CMA, you inherited an agency in the aftermath of Brexit with a majorly increased workload – a progressive agency Part of a triad with the US agencies – This is harder when you are on your own , facing opposition from the defence bar. Give us your vision for the agency to maximize its impact in the next 4/5 years, how it is working alongside other areas of economic policy – initiatives, focus, scope. BIG DISCUSSION of industrial policy and public investment at home – DMU – what are the lessons you are drawing from DMA implementation?

Benoit – your view, and vision for the next Commission. What would you like to see, in antitrust and more broadly?

Nuno – similar question.

John: will ask you about landmark enforcement cases/decisions/judgments which have been in the news lately. Amazon, Microsoft, Illumina, IQVia, several hospital mergers… And as a follow up, what cases are these new-wave enforcers NOT bringing? i.e. what you stopped doing, and what those decisions might add to our understanding of the approach to problems of concentrated power in society. Also please go beyond mergers, talk about rulemaking, studies, posture towards data and privacy… here we want to big up why an antitrust agency needs to be a much more ambitious “agent for change”, a partner to government, more creative than the usual diet of mergers. And what is your wishlist for the next 5 years?

Aviv: the guidelines! but pls take the glass half full posture: i.e. a contro readout of the Guidelines (instead of saying to the economists “there, there, nothing to see”, pls highlight what’s really NEW and different and progressive!).

16.00-16.20 Conversation with FTC Chair Lina Khan

The US is at the forefront of a broader economic paradigm shift – contextualize this moment for me. What does that shift mean in the context of antitrust?

How does fair competition intersect or bolster other policy domains, like trade, national security, or industrial policy?

How is the FTC using its 100+-year old authorities in fast-moving digital markets? How are you approaching the rapid onset of AI?

What is your vision for what you would like to accomplish in antitrust in the next four years?

16.20-16.40 AI Act, DSA and DMA Implementation : Conversation with Roberto Viola, Director General, DG Connect

AI ACT – You negotiated the AI Act personally: why do you think it will work, and why are some governments more difficult about it?

Is the AI Act still in danger?  On 2 February (Friday), member states meet to   endorse the official text of the AI Act. That should just have been a formality, after political agreement in early December. But France and Germany still mull rejecting the whole compromise, potentially endangering the whole AI Act.  We will see what happens, but some think there might be a real chance that the AI Act would still fall through. Do you  think that it is indeed conceivable that the whole AI Act might still collapse? What would be the implications?

AI Office and DMA/DSA

Assuming that the AI Act does get passed, a key part of implementing it will fall to the EU AI Office – which is to be established inside DG CNECT. You will be leading the AI Office, the DSA enforcers and DMA task force: what’s the link between AI Act and DMA (and DSA) how will this work together?

Specifically on the AI Office

You will have to do the actual policing, certainly for the big players, like developers of most powerful AI models. What will that AI Office need to fulfil that role effectively, considering what it is up against? And considering how some member states are much less enthusiastic about policing European generative AI than the AI Act foresees. What will be the right division of labour between national authorities to look after their national AI companies (whom they might want to cut some slack) and the EU level? Also from that perspective: assuming the AI Act gets passed, what will the AI Office need to fulfil its mission?

16.40-17.10 Fireside – AI Awakening: Making it Pro-Human Despite the Tech Industry?

Conversation with Daron Acemoglu and Erik Brynjolfsson

17.10– 18.30 The European Grand Digital Regulation Project: What is our Theory of Change?

Alberto Bacchiega

Filomena Chirico

Francesca Bria

Brando Benifei

Amba Kak

Johnny Ryan

Joanna Bryson

Filomena and Alberto: you are the DMA experts and I will direct the “how is it all going” questions at you. Let’s try to tackle the thorny issues (of course, within limits). Will put to you something along these lines:

We all know you’ve had endless engagement and meetings with the gatekeepers over the months. In the end however the law still requires that they put forward proactively an implementation plan that you will assess for “compliance”.

What does “compliance” mean? Is the law that clear on what specifically companies must do?

Realising we are a month away from deadline, what is your realistic assessment of the main remaining issues and areas where the certification of compliance will be difficult?

What then happens: if companies are not compliant, they get fined and the non-compliance process starts. They will appeal. Then what?

Isnt the combination of “companies doing the least possible” proactively, to argue they are “compliant”, and then the prospect of delaydelaydelay in appeals going to make sure effects will be slow coming?

Parliament is already thinking of changes to the DMA to power it up better and deal with misfires and gaps. What do you expect to happen?

What would DMA 2.0 look like? Will it extend to cloud and AI?

The AI discussion has various angles.

Brando: update on AI Act implementation in Europe. This is going to be a critical week. Is the AI Act still in danger? (we know member states meet on Friday to endorse the official text of the AI Act. That should just have been a formality, after political agreement in early December. But France and Germany still mull rejecting the whole compromise, potentially endangering the whole AI Act.  We will see what happens this week, but some think there might be a real chance that the AI Act would still fall through. Where are we on that? Do you think that it is indeed conceivable that the whole AI Act might still collapse:

Follow up: International landscape – There Council of Europe is trying to finalise the AI treaty with the US as “observer” and can influence things. Main bone of contention: do its provisions also cover private companies and what they do? The Commission thinks it should; the US thinks it should not.  Will the EU stick to its guns in international negotiations/ agreements and push hard for rules comparable to the AI Act, or fold? What is your sense for where things are headed?

Amba: talk about the FTC’s recent Tech Summit where multiple experts gave a diagnosis of competition issues. This is important as we wont have really talked about competition issues and grandfathering of market power dangers at this point. Talk about FTC announcing Section 6.b investigation of AI partnership/concentration and why this is the first and important broader scope study.

Follow up: Bridge to AI public investment and industrial strategy (EC AI Innovation Package) — to what extent will these proposals for public options address concentration and where are there challenges —

Joanna: We have heard multiple narratives on AI since it exploded onto the scene a few months back, the “existential risk” one, “super intelligence is arriving”, to which you and other ethicists said what do you mean “it is arriving”? It’s not a UFO landing. You are inventing it and selling it. ChatGPT is just a giant ad, AI just is a marketing term for compute-intensive systems only a few companies can produce, but the framework for LLMs existed for years – it’s not a sci-fi threat, it’s not intelligent. The real risks are much more mundane – though very serious: not making work more productive but increasing inequality, limiting wage growth, exacerbating discrimination, supercharging disinformation, amplifying toxic content, further injuring privacy, powering up the massive crisis of human rights online. These are the real and present dangers. SO, Question: Where did we land on this in the AI act? The Risk approach? My sense is you are skeptical about the idea that there are AI applications that are ex ante low risk or, that there is a lot of digital tech that is inherently safe enough that we needn’t worry about it being abused or weaponized. Two questions therefore:

The AI Act makes a distinction between low risk and high-risk AI. As it stands, is that dividing line in the right place?

And if you think that there is more risky stuff than people may realize: how much digital openness to the rest of the world is appropriate? Take care of the high-risk stuff, and let the rest flow freely? Or does Europe need higher firewalls, too?

Also will bring you back into the DMA discussion: you are more sanguine about the DMA than me, so take a minute to outline what you think it would take to make that a success. And let’s go to the “dissipating power” issue! What is our theory of change disperse the power of gatekeepers, if DMA only goes so far?

This goes to my “theory of change” question. The Web is a decentralised open architecture: the way that it has been monopolised needs to be reversed. That means rectifying any interference with Web interoperability such as Google’s AMP, interference with Header Bidding, and Apple’s ITP. How do we do that? Is the DMA enough?

Johnny: please set out your framework for Six Horsemen of the Apocalypse!

Francesca: how are we going to disperse this power? What will we need to do? What alternative solutions might there be? Talk about decentralisation and European sovereignty as you did so well in the European Parliament event!

6.30 End of Conference