• Speaker: Cristiano Codagnone, European Commission
• Moderator: Paul Timmers, Oxford University, UK and European University, Cyprus

About the Event

May 18, 2021
5:00 – 6:00 PM
(17:00) CET

Abstract

Platforms represent a new structure for organising economic and social activities and appear as a hybrid between a market and a hierarchy. They are match makers like traditional markets, but they are also company heavy in assets and often quoted in the stock exchange. Platforms, therefore, are not simply technological corporations but a form of ‘quasi-infrastructure’. Indeed, in their coordination function, platforms are as much an institutional form as a means of innovation. Ever since the launch of the Digital Single Market in 2015, platforms have gone under the radar of the EU for different matter such as consumer protection in general, competition, and lately data protection. In addition to genuine policy concerns, the debate on platforms and on other digital transformation phenomena have gained higher political status in the form of the debate on digital and data sovereignty of Europe vis a vis the US and China. Platforms have also managed for some time to get away with regulation adopting a lobbying based on rhetorical framing. This has been revived during the Pandemic when dominant platforms extolled their data provided to government as an important tool to track and contain the spread of the virus.

In this seminar, besides discussing this more high level issue, I will also address more specific ones such as data protection, extraction of behavioral surplus, consumer protection, and competition issues. I conclude by comparing two different regulatory approach: the application of the precautionary principle as opposed to a cost-benefit assessment of intervention.

Slides

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Video

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