Research Archives - The Competition Law Hub

Steering and User Choice in the DMA

ComplawAdmin — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 07:49:18 +0000

Vicky Robertson and David Führer just published a working paper version of their analysis of Articles 5(4) and 5(5) Digital Markets Act (DMA) on SSRN. These two provisions enshrine business users’ right to steer their customers away from gatekeepers’ app stores, as well as users’ right to access content they acquired off a core platform service. Articles 5(4) and 5(5) DMA need to be seen against the background of the anti-steering provisions typically included in various application stores. These have already been subject to antitrust enforcement and have now also come under DMA scrutiny in the Apple App Store (non-compliance) decision of 2025.

The contribution is forthcoming in a comprehensive commentary on the Digital Markets Act, edited by Ioannis Kokkoris.

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Book Award for Klaudia Majcher

ComplawAdmin — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 10:12:50 +0000

Klaudia Majcher’s book on ‘Coherence between Data Protection and Competition Law in Digital Markets’ was awarded the Irena & Jerzy Wiszniewski Foundation Award for the best scholarly work in the field of trademarks, patents and competition law. Published by Oxford University Press in 2023, when Klaudia was Assistant Professor at WU Vienna, the book argues for a more integrated approach to enforcing competition law and data protection in digital markets.

The award was presented on 19 March 2026 during the conference ‘The Regulation of Markets in Defence of Democratic Principles’ at the University of Warsaw, co-organised by the Centre for Antitrust and Regulatory Studies, the Irena & Jerzy Wiszniewski Foundation, and the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Law Studies.

Many congratulations, Klaudia!

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ICN Unilateral Conduct Workshop 2026

ComplawAdmin — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 09:40:39 +0000

At the 2026 ICN Unilateral Conduct Workshop in Prague (15 to 17 April 2026), Vicky Robertson joined the delegation of the European Commission as a Non-Governmental Advisor to DG COMP. The delegation was comprised of Vera Pozzato, Cristina Sjödin, Ligia Dorobantu (all DG COMP),and the NGAs Anne C Witt (EDHEC), Miguel Odriozola (Clifford Chance) and Vicky Robertson (WU Vienna & CLH). The Workshop was hosted by the Czech Competition Authority UOHS.

Vicky contributed to the panel on remedies and commitments in unilateral conduct cases and shared her research on data-driven tools for competition enforcement, focusing on data-driven monitoring of remedies, its opportunities and challenges. The panel was moderated by Rita Leandro Vasconcelos (Pérez-Llorca) and included fellow panelists Alexandre Barreto (Brazilian Competition Authority CADE), Marjorie Holmes (Reed Smith) and Friso Bostoen (University of Tilburg). Her contribution was based on her research on algorithmic remedies (with Jana Lasser; see here) as well as her research on data-driven tools in antitrust enforcement (with Jürgen Fleiß, Jan Amthauer, Franziska Guggi, Dominik Kowald and Valentin Forster; see here, here, here and here).

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DMA High-Level Group

ComplawAdmin — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 10:25:46 +0000

At the 6^th plenary meeting of the High-Level Group for the DMA on 20 March 2026, Vicky Robertson was invited as an academic expert to contribute to a discussion on the future of digital regulation in the European Union. In her talk, she discussed her research on coherence in EU platform regulation (with Klaudia Majcher, see here), the external benchmark approach (with Ariel Ezrachi, see here) and on the complementarity of EU competition law and the DMA (see here). The Hub’s former visiting research fellow Belle Beems and Orla Lynskey also spoke about issues affecting the future of digital regulation, including institutional coherence and the collapse of boundaries between legal fields.

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Fabian Ziermann awarded PhD

ComplawAdmin — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 09:45:00 +0000

On 23 March 2026, Fabian Ziermann successfully defended his doctoral thesis entitled ‘Player Copyrights and Antitrust Ecosystems in eSports and Gaming’ and was awarded the doctorate in law by WU Vienna. His doctoral committee consisted of Vicky Robertson (WU Vienna, CLH), Andrew Murray (LSE) and Martin Winner (WU Vienna). Fabian’s doctoral thesis explores the relevance of player copyrights and how competition law can be a basis to protect players’ continued access to eSports and other video games. Fabian conducted his research supported by a DOC grant of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

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Special Issue on the EU Market Definition Notice

ComplawAdmin — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 08:56:59 +0000

The European Commission’s revised Market Definition Notice, published in 2024, brought many changes and updates to this central analytical step in EU competition law. A Special Issue in the Journal of Antitrust Enforcement, published in March 2026, puts a spotlight on the Notice’s novelties, its intricacies and the questions it raises. Covering issues as diverse as labour market definition, systemic market power, ecosystems, intellectual property rights, homogeneous conditions of competition and multi-sided markets, the Special Issue contains contributions by Terézia Ovečka, Joanna Mazur and Antoni Napieralski, Emanuela Lecchi, Annika Stöhr and Oliver Budzinski, Anouk van der Veer, Hedvig Schmidt, Lirio Barros, Timo Klein, Sophie Kümmel, and Ilaria Noviello, Jan Broulík, as well as Helen Ralston-Smith and Gunnar Niels. The Special Issue was brought together by guest editors Magali Eben (CREATe, University of Glasgow) and The Hub’s Vicky Robertson (WU Vienna). Their editorial can be read in open access here.

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Data-Driven Tools, Ancillary Services and Competition Law

ComplawAdmin — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 11:29:16 +0000

At the annual seminar of the WU’s Institute of Business Law in Retz (5 and 6 March 2026), Franziska Guggi and David Führer presented recent insights from their research. Franziska discussed data-driven tools that competition authorities rely on in their enforcement work, pointing to legal implications of the use of said tools. David discussed ancillary services that digital gatekeepers rely on, which only come under the Digital Markets Act under specific circumstances and therefore open up a number of questions as to how they should be treated.

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Data-Driven Enforcement of Competition Law

ComplawAdmin — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 08:04:49 +0000

On 6 February 2026, Franziska Guggi presented her ongoing PhD research in the Seminar on Recent Developments in EU Competition Law, organised by Fernando Castillo de la Torre and Eric Gippini-Fournier (both European Commission Legal Service) at Universidad CEU San Pablo in Madrid, Spain. During a panel on AI and competition law, she illustrated how data-driven tools can support competition authorities in their enforcement work. Franziska provided the audience, comprising both students and practitioners, with a range of examples, stretching from detecting price coordination using natural language processing (NLP) to monitoring undertakings’ compliance with remedies and commitments through web scraping. Further panel members included Carlota Reyners Fontana, Konstantina Bania and Alfonso Lamadrid de Pablo.

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Legal Research Methodologies

ComplawAdmin — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 08:08:03 +0000

During the Methodology Winter School of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship (CSDC) on 23 January 2026, Vicky Robertson held a workshop on legal research for the social sciences, introducing doctoral and postdoctoral students from a variety of fields to the basics of legal research. The main focus was on Hans Kelsen’s pyramid of legal sources, its modern interpretation and where democracy-related legal instruments figure in this scheme.

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Politics & Competition Law

ComplawAdmin — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 07:32:26 +0000

On 20 November 2025, Vicky Robertson participated in the ASCOLA NOEL panel discussion on “Politics & Competition Law”, together with fellow panellists Maciej Bernatt, Soojin Nam and John Newman. Our former visiting fellow Thomas Cheng acted as moderator. The panel explored the “right” relationship between politics and competition law, the extent to which competition law has been politicised in different jurisdictions, and at what point politicisation turns into instrumentalisation. You can re-watch the panel discussion here.

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