Tech Giants, Network Effects, and the politicisation of the EU’s antitrust cases

Large firms such as Amazon, Google, and Meta have been making worldwide headlines for abusing their market power and violating antitrust rules. Within the EU, the European Commission (EC) has been a regulatory powerhouse with the capacity to counterbalance the unfair dominance of these large firms. Interestingly, antitrust cases with large firms tend to gain news coverage and become subject to politicisation (i.e. discussions that take place in the public sphere). Across the literature, scholars have extensively investigated whether the EC has become subject to politicisation (Rauh 2019) and whether the EU as a polity ought to be politicised (Majone 1998). However, less attention has been paid to why competition policy and in particular, antitrust cases have become subject to politicisation. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring the conditions under which antitrust cases in the EU become politicised. This study suggests that firms with substantial network effects are more likely to form monopolies, which in turn trigger the politicisation of antitrust cases. Firms such as the Big Five (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google) are typically characterised by large network effects, given that their products tend to gain more value as the number of users increases. Network effects create a monopoly power held by these large tech giants. This monopoly power stirs debate and contestation among policymakers, who argue that these firms limit competition and innovation. At the same time, this also triggers discussions about whether antitrust enforcement is "strong enough" (Konstantinos 2017), leading to arguments that the "old" antitrust rules may not necessarily apply to a market world dominated by tech giants. Thus, this paper aims to understand the role that network effects and monopoly tendencies play in shaping political discourses and debates surrounding the EU’s antitrust enforcement.