EU 디지털 시장법의 함의와 경쟁법의 역할

Legislative bodies in the EU are rapidly enacting legislation on the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Regarding legislation of this Act, the will of the European authorities such as the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, and the European Parliament is firm. Online platforms’ certain actions as digital ‘gatekeepers’ may have anti-competitive effects on the EU internal market. On December 15, 2020, the European Commission proposed a draft DMA to address these issues. Since then, several amendments to the Commission’s proposal have been made by the EU Ministerial Council and the EU Parliament. Eventually, the final agreement was reached on March 24, 2022. Given the comparison between the EU Commission’s draft DMA and the amendments proposed by the EU Ministerial Council and the EU Parliament, it is recognized that the Member States and the EU Parliament have approved many key approaches or key elements adopted in the draft. Meanwhile, looking at the amendments and additions made by the EU Council of Ministers and the EU Parliament, unlike other laws, regulations have been strengthened by taking a more stringent stance on gatekeepers than those initially proposed by the EU Commission. DMA is significant because it introduces a new norm for the digital market that limits the discretion of gatekeepers’ business strategy. In addition, the purpose of the law is to promote market contestability and fairness by regulating large and dominant digital platforms that act as intermediaries for key digital services that control key gateways to digital markets. DMA is considered the most rapidly enacted law among the EU legislations that are likely to be introduced for other digital economies. The EU’s DMA is the first full-scale giant platform regulation, and all the details such as the design of the regulations, the contents of each regulation, and the law enforcement plan of the competition authorities are unprecedented. Therefore, DMA is expected to be a great reference for the operation of related legislation and systems in many countries, including Korea. In the Korean context, DMA has an intermediate characteristic between competition law and the so-called win-win law. There are many expectations and prospects about DMA’s role in the future digital economy. Even if laws such as DMA are enacted, the role of competition law cannot be reduced. In addition, since DMA and competition laws are complementary to each other, the enforcement issues should be carefully coordinated so that the regulations of the two laws can be flexibly matched for the sound development of the digital market.