Abstract
When one only considers the case law of the Belgian Competition Authority, its track record in digital markets appears limited. When one includes the authority’s broader contributions to competition policy, however, a richer picture emerges. This chapter paints that picture, reviewing the authority's relevant institutional features as well its substantive assessments of digital markets. It goes into questions of market definition and market power as well as anticompetitive conduct (restrictive agreements and abuse of dominance), in particular self-preferencing, data access and use, most favoured nation clauses, and economic dependence. The chapter concludes that the Belgian Competition Authority is a modern, cooperative competition authority with in-depth knowledge of digital competition but fairly few opportunities (so far) to put that knowledge into practice.
In accordance with the ASCOLA Transparency and Disclosure Declaration, the author has nothing to disclose. This article was updated until August 2021.
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Notes
- 1.
M. Wiggers, R. Struijlaart and J. Dibbits, Digital Competition Law in Europe: A Concise Guide, Kluwer 2019, Chapter 7.
- 2.
This view is also taken in R. Alderweireldt, J. Froidmont, A. Lepièce and D. Van Liedekerke, Belgium, In: D. Mândrescu (ed.), EU Competition Law and the Digital Economy, Eleven International Publishing 2020, pp. 105–130. The author acknowledges reliance on this work, in particular for case selection.
- 3.
See Wetboek Economisch Recht (hereafter: Code of Economic Law or CEL), arts IV.16–29.
- 4.
The Competition College decides on infringement cases that are not settled or closed by the Investigation and Prosecution Service as well as non-simplified merger control procedures.
- 5.
Before that, from 2007 to 2013, he already served as director general of the directorate general for competition in the Belgian ministry of economic affairs.
- 6.
Jacques Steenbergen has done so not only through active cooperation with national (e.g. parliament) and supra-/international (e.g. ECN, ICN, OECD) institutions, but also by being a frequent speaker at conferences. See BCA, Annual Report (2019), pp. 28–30.
- 7.
Code of Economic Law, art IV.19, §1, 5.
- 8.
Euractiv, Belgium to launch antitrust probe on Apple’s iPad (18 January 2011), available at https://www.euractiv.com/section/competition/news/belgium-to-launch-antitrust-probe-on-apple-s-ipad/ last accessed 10 February 2021.
- 9.
BCA, Annual Report (2011), p. 12. At present, this arrangement appears formalized in Article 3.1.3(a) “Reader” Apps of the App Store Review Guidelines, available at https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ last accessed 10 February 2021.
- 10.
EC, Commission opens investigations into Apple’s App Store rules (16 June 2020) IP/20/1073.
- 11.
ACM, ACM launches investigation into abuse of dominance by Apple in its App Store (11 April 2019), available at https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/acm-launches-investigation-abuse-dominance-apple-its-app-store last accessed 10 February 2021.
- 12.
Joint memorandum of the Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourg competition authorities on challenges faced by competition authorities in a digital world, p. 4, available at https://www.belgiancompetition.be/en/about-us/publications/joint-memorandum-belgian-dutch-and-luxembourg-competition-authorities last accessed 10 February 2021 (hereafter ‘Joint Memorandum of the Benelux NCAs’).
- 13.
Ibid, p. 5 (the Memorandum reads “allowsthe”—an apparent typo that has been corrected here).
- 14.
Mededeling van de Belgische Mededingingsautoriteit betreffende de informele zienswijzen van de voorzitter van de Belgische Mededingingsautoriteit, Official Gazette 2020, N. 143, p. 37397.
- 15.
Het prioriteitenbeleid van de Belgische Mededingingsautoriteit voor 2020, available at https://www.bma-abc.be/nl/over-ons/publicaties/nota-prioriteitenbeleid-2020 last accessed 10 February 2021 (hereafter ‘Prioriteitenbeleid Belgische Mededingingsautoriteit 2020’). Such a priority was absent most of the preceding years, see the review of 2014–19 in R. Alderweireldt, J. Froidmont, A. Lepièce and D. Van Liedekerke, Belgium, In: D. Mândrescu (ed.), EU Competition Law and the Digital Economy, Eleven International Publishing 2020, p. 109.
- 16.
OECD, Abuse of dominance in digital markets – contribution from Belgium (2020) DAF/COMP/GF/WD(2020)2, p. 3.
- 17.
BCA, Decision 2012-P/K-07-AUD, SPRL Dialo/SA Google Belgium (17 April 2012).
- 18.
EC, Commission probes allegations of antitrust violations by Google (30 November 2010) IP/10/1624.
- 19.
See J.-C. Rochet and J. Tirole, Platform competition in two-sided markets, Journal of the European Economic Association 2003(4), pp. 990–1029 for the foundational article.
- 20.
L. Filistrucchi, D. Geradin, E. van Damme and P. Affeldt, Market definition in two-sided markets: theory and practice, Journal of Competition Law and Economics 2014(2), pp. 293–339.
- 21.
See e.g. Bundeskartellamt, The market power of platforms and networks (Working Paper 2016), pp. 25–32.
- 22.
Google Android (case AT.40099) Commission Decision, where the EC acknowledges the market for Android app stores is multisided (para 638), serving both OEMs and developers—as well as consumers, but since the abuse was not consumer-facing, this side was largely left out of focus. The EC considered substitutability from these different perspectives (in particular paras 284–294), but ended up defining a single market for ‘Android app stores’.
- 23.
Google Search (Shop**) (case AT.39740) Commission Decision, para 159, where the EC acknowledges that “[g]eneral search services and online search advertising constitute the two sides of a general search engine platform” (para 159), but then focuses only on the market for general search services (in which the abuse took place).
- 24.
BCA, Decision ABC-2016-I/O-31-AUD, Immoweb (7 November 2016), paras 9–21.
- 25.
The BCA relied on Bundeskartellamt, Decision B6-39/15, Immowelt/Immonet (20 April 2015). The investigative service also recognized the advertising functionality of online real estate portals (and tested its substitutability with other means of advertising), but found the matching function predominant.
- 26.
See recently BCA, Decision BMA-2019-C/C-16, Telenet Group BVBA/De Vijver Media NV (13 May 2019). The BCA also defined other (e.g. upstream) markets, but those are less important for our purposes.
- 27.
The EC regularly defines markets for non-priced services such as messaging apps, see e.g. Facebook/WhatsApp (case M.7217) Commission Decision, paras 20–34. In Germany, legislators left no room for doubt when they amended their Competition Act to state that free services can constitute a market, see Act against Restraints of Competition, §18(2a) (“The assumption of a market shall not be invalidated by the fact that a good or service is provided free of charge.”).
- 28.
See e.g. Google Android (case AT.40099) Commission Decision, paras 284–322 and 483–566.
- 29.
On this difficulty, see J. Crémer, Y.-A. de Montjoye and H. Schweitzer, Competition policy for the digital era (Special Advisers’ Report 2019), p. 45 (“it is unclear how this test could be made operational in practice without a precise measurement of quality … and without a way to quantify the effects of the quality degradation on the firm’s revenues in order to determine whether such a degradation would be profitable”).
- 30.
J. Steenbergen, On competition policy and online markets, European Competition and Regulatory Law Review 2019(1), VII.
- 31.
Joint Memorandum of the Benelux NCAs, p. 6.
- 32.
BCA, Decision ABC-2016-I/O-31-AUD, Immoweb (7 November 2016), paras 22–27.
- 33.
See inter alia Prioriteitenbeleid Belgische Mededingingsautoriteit 2020; Joint Memorandum of the Benelux NCAs; and BCA, Decision BMA-2019-C/C-16, Telenet Group BVBA/De Vijver Media NV (13 May 2019) for an application, in particular regarding the role of data.
- 34.
See Joint Memorandum of the Benelux NCAs, pp. 5–6.
- 35.
Google Search (Shop**) (case AT.39740) Commission Decision and EC, Commission sends Statement of Objections to Amazon for the use of non-public independent seller data and opens second investigation into its e-commerce business practices (10 November 2020) IP/20/2077.
- 36.
OECD, Abuse of dominance in digital markets—contribution from Belgium (2020) DAF/COMP/GF/WD(2020)2, p. 3, describing how it “imposed e.g. remedies with regard to self-preferencing in respect of data access on a cable network for the operator and third party customers in a merger case” (presumably referring to BCA, Decision BMA-2019-C/C-16, Telenet Group BVBA/De Vijver Media NV (13 May 2019), see discussion under next section).
- 37.
See T. Krattenmaker and S. Salop, Anticompetitive exclusion: raising rivals’ costs to achieve power over price, The Yale Law Journal 1986(2), pp. 209–293.
- 38.
BCA, Prijsniveau in supermarkten (Study 2012), pp. 88–91.
- 39.
Moreover, the online interface offered by online platforms may offer more effective and certainly subtler opportunities for exclusion than those of supermarkets.
- 40.
Great reliance on data and the algorithmic processing thereof can also have important consequences for the assessment of restrictive agreements. For example, it may make markets more transparent, which can increase the risk of collusion. However, given the lack of cases dealt with by the BCA in this area, the focus is on abuse of dominance.
- 41.
EC, Commission sends Statement of Objections to Amazon for the use of non-public independent seller data and opens second investigation into its e-commerce business practices (10 November 2020) IP/20/2077.
- 42.
BCA, Prijsniveau in supermarkten (Study 2012), pp. 88–91.
- 43.
BCA, Decision ABC-2019-V/M-10, SPRL The Great Circle/l’Institut Royal Météorologique (15 February 2019).
- 44.
See in particular Autorité de la concurrence and Bundeskartellamt, Competition law and data (Joint Report 2016), pp. 18 (data can meet the conditions of the refusal to supply doctrine if it is “truly unique and … there is no possibility for the competitor to obtain the data that it needs to perform its services.”).
- 45.
BCA, Decision BMA-2015-P/K-27-AUD, Stanleybet Belgium NV et al./Nationale Loterij NV (22 September 2015).
- 46.
Bundeskartellamt, Decision B6-22/16, Facebook (6 February 2019). Note that the decision is still under appeal.
- 47.
For a discussion that includes the Facebook decision, see Friso Bostoen, Online platforms and pricing: adapting abuse of dominance assessments to the economic reality of free products, Computer Law & Security Review 2019, pp. 273–80.
- 48.
Facebook/WhatsApp (case M.7217) Commission Decision, para 164.
- 49.
BCA, Decision BMA-2019-C/C-16, Telenet Group BVBA/De Vijver Media NV (13 May 2019), pp. 207–210. It argued viewing data constitutes personal data, and that sharing such data would infringe various GDPR provisions.
- 50.
Ibid, pp. 228-229, referencing CFI, case T-201/04, Microsoft v Commission, EU:T:2007:289 and Google Search (Shop**) (case AT.39740) Commission Decision.
- 51.
BCA, case MEDE-C/C-19/0006, Liberty Global / De Vijver Media – Voorstel Verbintenissen (8 mei 2019), Section F.
- 52.
Based on Koninklijk besluit betreffende de samenwerking tussen het Belgisch Instituut voor Postdiensten en Telecommunicatie enerzijds, en de Belgische Mededingingsautoriteit anderzijds, Official Gazette 2014, N. 198, p. 53403.
- 53.
On this topic, see F. Bostoen, Most favoured nation clauses: towards an assessment framework under EU competition law, European Competition and Regulatory Law Review 2017(3), pp. 223–236.
- 54.
BCA, Resultaten van de monitoring in de hotelsector (6 April 2017), available at https://www.belgiancompetition.be/en/node/5779 last accessed 10 February 2021.
- 55.
EC, Monitoring exercise carried out in the online hotel booking sector by EU competition authorities (Report 2017), available at https://ec.europa.eu/competition/ecn/hotel_monitoring_report_en.pdf last accessed 10 February 2021.
- 56.
Among others, narrow MFNs prevent free-riding by hotels. The Bundeskartellamt is an exception, as it also prohibited narrow MFNs in the case of Booking.com. It justified this diverging position by pointing to the specific nature of the German market and the failure of Booking.com to substantiate its efficiency claims, see OECD, Hearing on across platform parity agreements – note by Germany (2015) DAF/COMP/WD(2015)56, pp. 9–10.
- 57.
EC, Outcome of the meeting of ECN DGs (17 February 2017), available at http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/ECN_meeting_outcome_17022017.pdf last accessed 10 February 2021.
- 58.
BCA, Decision ABC-2016-I/O-31-AUD, Immoweb (7 November 2016), paras 9–21.
- 59.
Wet betreffende de tariefvrijheid van exploitanten van toeristische logies in de contracten afgesloten met platform-operators voor online reservatie, Official Gazette 2018, N. 188, p. 62710.
- 60.
Ibid, arts 3–6.
- 61.
EC, Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act) COM(2020)842.
- 62.
Ibid, art 5(b). The DMA proposal includes a number of other obligations/prohibitions, including on app stores. Unlike the MFN prohibition, those are not self-executing but are “susceptible of being further specified” (art 6).
- 63.
For the Belgian provisions on interim measures, see Code of Economic Law, arts IV.26, §3, 12° and IV.71–73.
- 64.
See T. De Meese and E. Wijckmans, Voorlopige maatregelen door de Belgische Mededingingsautoriteit: stand van zaken na 5 jaar prima facie-vaststellingen onder Boek IV van het Wetboek economisch recht, Tijdschrift voor Belgisch Handelsrecht 2018(8), pp. 799–817.
- 65.
Wet houdende wijziging van het Wetboek van Economisch Recht met betrekking tot misbruiken van economische afhankelijkheid, onrechtmatige bedingen en oneerlijke marktpraktijken tussen ondernemingen [‘Law amending the Code of Economic Law with regard to abuses of economic dependence, abusive clauses and unfair commercial practices between undertakings’], Official Gazette 2019, N. 115, p. 50066; Koninklijk besluit tot wijziging van de boeken I en IV van het Wetboek van economisch recht met betrekking tot misbruiken van economische afhankelijkheid, Official Gazette 2020, N. 228, p. 59654.
- 66.
Council Regulation 1/2003 of 16 December 2002 on the implementation of the rules on competition laid down in Articles 81 and 82 of the Treaty, OJ 2003 L 1, p. 1.
- 67.
Code of Economic Law, art I.6, 12bis.
- 68.
Ibid, art IV.2/1. See further J. Blockx, Belgian prohibition of abuse of economic dependence enters into force, Journal of European Competition Law & Practice 2021 (advance access).
- 69.
Code de Commerce, art L420–2.
- 70.
Tribunal de commerce de Paris, case 2017050625, Ministre de L’Economie et des Finances/Amazon (2 September 2019). For a discussion, see Friso Bostoen, Abuse of relative dominance in the platform economy: a French court finds Amazon’s contracts with third-party sellers significantly imbalanced, CoRe Blog (12 November 2019), available at https://www.lexxion.eu/en/coreblogpost/amazon-case-france/ last accessed 10 February 2021.
- 71.
Joint Memorandum of the Benelux NCAs, p. 5 (own emphasis).
- 72.
Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and Climate, Letter to the President of the Second Chamber (17 May 2019), available at https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/brieven_regering/detail?id=2019Z09936&did=2019D20357.
- 73.
ACM, Extension of enforcement toolkit to increase effectiveness in dealing with competition problems in the digital economy (6 August 2019), available at https://www.acm.nl/sites/default/files/documents/ex-ante-tool_0.pdf.
- 74.
Joint Memorandum of the Benelux NCAs, p. 5–6 (‘Rather than broad-stroked regulation, these remedies should be proportionate and tailored to specific situations.’).
- 75.
Ibid, p. 5.
- 76.
See EC, New Competition Tool (Inception Impact Assessment) Ares(2020)2877634.
- 77.
EC, Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act) COM(2020)842.
- 78.
Bundeskartellamt, case B2-88/18, Amazon (17 July 2019).
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Bostoen, F. (2023). Belgium. In: Kilpatrick, B., Kobel, P., Këllezi, P. (eds) Antitrust in Data Driven Markets & Legal Framework for Influencers, Native Advertising and Control over the Use of AI in Marketing. LIDC Contributions on Antitrust Law, Intellectual Property and Unfair Competition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07422-6_4
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