The German legislature and competition agency are on the front foot in shoring up antitrust laws and taking action to deal with the challenges raised by a digital economy.

Merger notification rules have been amended to ensure that acquisitions of small but significant competitors by the tech giants do not fall through the net.

The Bundeskartellamt is engaged in a controversial investigation of Facebook’s data collection practices.

And a raft of new regulation for platforms is on the drawing board, as well as potentially far-reaching changes to abuse of dominance laws to deal with intermediation power and market tipping.

In this episode of Competition Lore, Professor Rupprecht Podszun of the Heinrich Heine Universitat Dusseldorf explains these developments, what’s behind them and why they are likely to be influential across Europe. Industrial policy, politics and the philosophical underpinnings of German competition law all feature in the fascinating discussion.

You can access the new statutory provisions in the German competition legislation introduced in 2017 here. The Bundeskartellamt’s preliminary assessment in its Facebook proceeding is available on its website. And the report on Modernising the Law on Abuse of Market Power is also available online.

Featuring regular cut-through interviews with leading thinkers, movers and shakers, Competition Lore is a podcast series that engages us all in a debate about the transformative potential and risks of digitalised competition.

Join Caron Beaton-Wells, Professor in Competition Law at the University of Melbourne, to tackle what it means to participate as a competitor, consumer or citizen in a digital economy and society.

Competition Lore is produced by Written & Recorded.