The final text of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (the "DMCC Act") was published yesterday. This Act, which received royal assent on 24 May 2024 as part of the pre-election 'wash up' process, introduces the most significant changes to competition law for over 20 years including a new digital markets competition regime, changes to merger control, changes to the application of competition law and the powers of the CMA, as well as various changes in the realm of consumer law too.
The vast majority of the provisions of the DMCC Act will only come into effect once Regulations are made by the Secretary of State. This is expected to be one of the first tasks for the new Secretary of State following the General Election and the Regulations should be passed in the Autumn later this year (although the new rules on foreign ownership of newspaper mergers are already in force, and the rules on energy network mergers will come into force on 24 July 2024). The CMA also hopes that following its current consultation on draft guidance for the digital markets competition regime, it will be able to publish the final versions of these in October 2024.
Over the coming weeks we will be taking a deep dive into each of the main areas of the DMCC Act and the accompanying CMA guidance, starting with the most talked about aspect: the new digital markets competition regime. This establishes new rules that will apply to those firms designated as having 'strategic market status', including the imposition of conduct requirements, the ability to make so called 'pro-competitive interventions' and requirements to report on certain acquisitions over a set value.
Keep a look out for our next post on the DMCC Act, which will take a closer look at how the assessment of 'strategic market status' will be carried out, making a comparison with the more traditional approach to assessing 'dominance' under competition law. Both concepts involve an assessment of market power, but the CMA appears to be taking a markedly different approach under this new digital markets regime.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.