Rocking the Contestability and Fairness Foundations: Multi-Level Governance and Trust Relations for Futureproofing the DMA’s Effectiveness

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is aimed at setting out harmonised rules to ensure contestable and fair markets in the digital arena across the Union. The regulatory instrument is, thus, divided into two major objectives: ensuring that the impending fragmentation of the regulation of digital markets does not reproduce any further across the Member States as well as the pursuit of the ethereal concepts of contestability and fairness. Under the regulatory and economic lenses, contestability and fairness are not workable concepts to be incorporated directly by the European Commission in its enforcement of the DMA. As a response to that, the chapter proposes a set of metrics, considering different perspectives born into these concepts, to guide the Commission’s application of the regulatory framework and the Court of Justice’s futureproofing of its effectiveness. Within this same spirit, the chapter refers contestability and fairness back to the DMA’s broader legitimacy through the concepts of multi-level governance and the enhancement of trust between the intervening agents of the regulation.