Ms Margrethe Vestager:

When we were developing the Digital Markets Act, we took our experience from competition law enforcement and focused on what we were seeing. One of our main challenges was to make procedures more efficient. Even when we move quite quickly, it takes time to bring a competition case, for obvious reasons. First, we have to prove dominance and then we have to prove that there has been wrongdoing through an illegal behaviour. The mechanism of using a Digital Markets Act is a bit different. Beforehand, parties are designated as gatekeepers according qualitative and quantitative objective criteria. The gatekeepers, and there will not be too many of them - maybe ten to 15, or something like that, have a number of obligations and a number of things they cannot do. What they must do and cannot do is based on our experience from competition law enforcement and the experience of seeing unfair trading practices. We are being quite specific, because otherwise, we would revert back to competition law enforcement. The regulation is supposed to complement competition law enforcement. There will still be competition cases, but not in the same way as before.

The question of data protection and security is a valid one. However, it is far-reaching to suggest, for instance, that an app store other than the one you already have on your phone would be an irresponsible app store that would allow any kind of crap to be pushed onto you. For all other providers, the same GDPR and privacy rules apply as for everyone else. One of the things I find thought-provoking is that if I am not happy with the prices or the choice of my supermarket, I go to another one. When it comes to app stores, once I buy my phone, there is a monopoly. I cannot use another app store to download the apps I want on my phone.