The Politics of Antitrust: How Politicisation Helped Shape the Digital Markets Act (DMA)

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) aims to increase competition in European digital markets by preventing dominant firms from exploiting their market power and facilitating market entry for new players. Here, we analyse how politicisation has shaped debates on EU antitrust regulation and contributed to the regulatory discussions leading to the DMA. To do this, we employ claims-making and legal analysis to examine how previous politicised antitrust cases, particularly those involving Big Tech firms like Google, intersect with the main points discussed in the DMA. Our analysis suggests that politicisation not only increases public and institutional engagement with competition policy but also plays a role in shaping regulatory responses to new technological and market challenges. By linking the contestation of EU antitrust decisions to legislative developments, we highlight the broader implications for EU regulatory approaches in other rapidly evolving policy domains (i.e. data governance and AI).