The second day of the conference was opened with the section dedicated to the Competition Law in the Digital Economy, which was chaired by Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Peter-Christian Muller-Graff, Head of the Chair for Economic and European Law, Faculty of Law Heidelberg University, President of the German Association of European Community Studies. After a short introduction, the floor was given to the first speaker: Mgr. Nikola Ledvinková from the Cartels and Payment Services Department of the Office for the Protection of Competition. She spoke about the practice of the Czech Competition Authority in dealing with digital technology. First, she introduced tools for investigation including Dawn raid, NUIX and program UFED, and continued with tools for detection, including projects called Computational Antitrust or Datacros II, which are aimed to reveal Bid rigging – an anti-competitive agreement between potential bidders to manipulate the bidding process. Regarding DMA regulation breaches, the European Commission is the best place to investigate the issues. Regarding cases of CCA, there are CHAPS (abuse of dominant position in the market of updated data on public transport timetables), EURONA (concluding anticompetitive vertical agreements on restriction of internet sales). She mentioned several interesting cases with a concentration of Seznam.cz and Borgis or cases of CETIN and Nej.cz.
Another speaker was JUDr. Ondřej Dostal, Head of Competition Compliance Unit, Legal Services Department, CEZ Group, spoke about the Digital Economy in Corporate Antitrust Practice.First, he introduced Digital Economy in relation to Market operations carried out by electronic means and spoke about the issues of market definition and market power and the effects of the DMA. He stressed, that competition law still applies in the digital market. However, compliance is increasingly demanding, because sometimes even experts are not sure, what are the obligations. However, digitalization and automatization do not exclude humans from competition violations despite they hide behind the computer. Data are considered tokens to enter the data market; you need it to be involved and accepted. It means that data are increasingly treated as a valuable product. Regarding the digital economy in antitrust corporate practice depends mainly on the type of business, the degree of innovation, and the type of activities. These include for example gas supply which is different from renewable energy installations or distribution. Finally, he spoke about cartelization via algorithms, market transparency due to data, and vertical restraints such as priority placement or abuse of (quasi) dominance by gatekeepers. Also, issues like state aid to edge computing and dawn raids aimed at the digital environment were discussed.
The third speaker was Assoc. Prof. JUDr. Michal Petr, Head of the Department of International and European Law, a member of Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, Palacký University who delivered a presentation entitled: “Parallel Competences in Digital Markets: Competition Law, Sector Regulation and Ne bis In Idem“. During the introduction, he summarized characteristics enabling manipulation of the market including economies of scale, network effects or the role of data mentioning the difficult application of competition law due to zero-price economy, new business models or very rapid developments happening. In the field of activity of competition, there are recently at least 3 closed cases with Google, a settlement with Amazon, an Investigation of Facebook and Apple, and many other issues. And within this environment comes Digital Markets Act raising many questions, for example, whether DMA and competition law can be applied in parallel. This might be explored in the context of ne bis in idem in EU law. In the following parts, he summarized DMA including obligations imposed on gatekeepers. Moreover, he also explored characteristics of competition law as a permanent and universal regulation, including the general prohibitions including abuse of market power or distortion of competition. Sector regulation was also summarized within the presentation and put in the context of DMA. The scope and intervention was summarized in a very effective table, showing competition, sector, and DMA effects in the scope and intervention, including ex-ante obligations under sectoral and DMA regulation.
The last speaker of the section was Prof. Kseniia Smyrnova, Ph.D., Vice-Rector, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. She spoke about the EU –Ukraine Association due to the Candidate Status: Steps Forward Integration to Digital Market. She explained the background of the association agreement, including the problematic Yanukovych’s refusal to sign it. The agreement now turns to an agreement of specific nature, having more than 10 years of history in this text. After the full scale of the invasion, just within three days, Ukraine applied for EU membership. It is necessary to note, that accession was not a fresh chapter, as the association agreement entered into force already in 2017. Digital market integration is a specific chapter, which works very well also due to digital diplomacy, and in 2018, a specific digital road map was adopted. Due to entry, Ukraine had to answer a questionary, containing about 200 pages. It was filled out very and within a few months submitted to the European Commission in the length of 1020 pages. Practically, it was the beginning of the screening as Commission started to evaluate. Based on the questionary, European Commission delivered an opinion to the European Council and EU member states voted unanimously to the candidate status. In a comparison of 60 years of the EU enlargement, we can observe that there was a great focus on the digital market, communications, energy, etc. As a result, the nature is very comprehensive and in the case of Ukraine represents some challenges. What is first: digitalization or regulation? Because of fast development, the legislation is impossible to analyse at once. That is why Commission adopted a partial approach and within a year issued three evaluation reports. Due to the specific focus of regulations, it is possible to directly use them for the competition authority to implement them. Ukraine operates a special interactive map for implementation and started to implement direct references to the EU law. Supreme Court of Ukraine ruled out last year in the area of gas and energy law, that decisions of the EU Court of Justice may be directly applicable in such cases, which are built up under the EU law. The case of Ukraine is an interesting example of Europeanization.
The first-afternoon panel was dedicated to the issues of Cyber Security, Cyber Crimes and the Legal Instruments for Effective Resilience and was opened by Chair: Assoc. Prof. JUDr. Blanka Vítová, PhD., Vice-Dean of Faculty of Law, Palacký University in Olomouc, member of Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence. After a short introduction, she welcomed JUDr. Pavel Telička, Crossroads Consulting, Managing Partner, former Commissioner, and former Vice-president of the European Parliament, talked about the Cybersecurity Challenges in the Background of Russian Aggression. During his opening remark, he stressed the multidimensional nature of the cybersecurity challenges, affecting business, intelligence, and many other areas. Russian aggression against Ukraine showed, that our enemies are having no hesitation to use modern technologies to destroy. The challenges might be met with legislation, however, it is a question of whether the legislation is having desired effects at the time when passing the process because it takes time, and changes in the technology environment are very rapid. In the rest of the presentation, he stressed the need for a complex approach to the issues and lack of capacities, namely in IT experts which are lacking.
Assoc. Prof. Lyudmila Falalejeva, Ph.D. and Bohdan Strilets, Ph.D., Koretsky Institute of State and Law of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine delivered contributions aboutLegal Regulation of Cyber Security in Markets in Crypto-Assets: New Challenges for the EU. Both authors started with an analysis of the current situation of markets in crypto assets which are becoming a significant part of the world economy. Dr. Strilets explained the nature of new technologies including distributed ledger and blockchain technologies. They followed the crypto assets regulation in the EU, based on the European Commission’s introduction of the proposal for Market in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation as a part of the digital finance strategy in September 2020. However, in the proposal, there is almost no attention to the cyber security of crypto assets. The rest of the presentation contained an overview and analysis of the existing legislative approach of the EU to cybersecurity and the theoretical approaches behind it.
Mgr. Eva Klusová, Might of Flight, provided a presentation entitled: „Tailoring and Targeting pro-Kremlin Propaganda in the Czech Republic: Target Groups Selection and Ways of Communication Amid Russian Aggression against Ukraine“.She started with a brief overview of the information landscape and identification of most vulnerable groups including lone seniors, inexperienced youth, spiritual stay-at-home or fixed mind setters/know it all with a further characteristic of the group and the ways vulnerabilities might be exploited by psychological operations.
The last speaker of the section was Assoc. Prof. Anna Hurova, Ph.D., Research Fellow at the Littoral, Environmental, and Society Department of the Scientific Research National Centre, Paris, who focused on Cyber Security as a Challenge for the Future of Space Activity.She mentioned the software as a necessary part of the satellite services and provided an overview on cyberattacks targeted at the satellites which is a very perspective means of attack in comparison to kinetic means, which is unlikely. Moreover, the cyberattack is not destroying the satellite per se. She mentioned that several organizations are mentioning the exceptional vulnerability of satellites. In the final slides, she focused on the economic and technological aspects of satellite protection.
The last section was dedicated to Consumer Protection in online World, which was chaired by the Assoc. Prof. JUDr. Michal Petr, Head of the Department of International and European Law, Palacky University, Member of Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence who welcomed guests and gave the floor to Assoc. Prof. JUDr. Blanka Vítová, Vice-Dean, Faculty of Law, Palacky University. She spoke about the Selected Aspects and Challenges in Consumer Protection in the Digital Era. In her summarizing contribution, she highlighted, among challenges, also opportunities in the field. In the beginning, she summarized emerging technologies and their impact on consumers and consumer law. Among challenges, she focused mainly on transparency and security. Another topic is the safety of products coming on the market from various origins, also via intermediaries. There is also an increasing issue of e-commerce, which is linked to information asymmetry and lack of transparency. Unclear terms and conditions, hidden information, etc. are at the heart of information asymmetry. There are also questions dedicated to the effectiveness of enforcement mechanisms and automated systems including personalized pricing, scoring, or content adapting. Sometimes the decisions might be discriminatory, based on factors including location, demographic location, etc., leading to price discrimination. Due to fast developments, business models are changing and may present big threats to consumer protection. One of the biggest challenges is technological illiteracy which might lead to loss of personal data, wrong choices, etc. Among opportunities, she mentioned technological aspects (when used correctly) to detect flaws and increase transparency about products and services, it may improve access to justice or enhance enforcing mechanisms. She concluded that challenges might be balanced with opportunities, especially in collaboration and education.
Dr. iur Rita Simon, LL.M, B.A., researcher, Institute of the State and Law of the Czech Academy of Sciences, was speaking about the Key Challenges of the Implementation of the Directive 2019/770 On Certain Aspects Concerning Contracts for the Supply of Digital Content and Digital Services. She spoke about the challenges of legislative procedure as the Czech legislator was unable to comply with the implementation. However, she stressed that amendments are filling the remaining gaps of the earlier unsuccessful transposition. She provided an overview of the main changes brought by the DCS Directives, including defining the essence of digital content and digital services. Moreover, digital content fulfilled the definition of goods acc. Section 489 CzCC but was not subject to general property rights. She stressed, that delayed implementation harmed Czech consumers, as the Czech consumers will not enjoy the innovations of the CSC Directive until the transpositions. Moreover, it created interpretation issues for courts. There are, however, many data issues because it is unclear which types of data could be counter-performance and how shall be treated data in the future.
The last speaker was Mgr. Ivan Ivančík, Ph.D., from the Faculty of Law, Comenius University in Bratislava, who presented the contribution entitled: “Vigilantibus iura scripta sunt. Consumers and Data Protection in on-line World“. He started with a focus on data processing as covered by the GDPR. The second issue was the necessity of processing in the public interest and legitimate interest. He highlighted, that on one hand we shall balance legal protection and on the other add ethical aspects to sharing data. This is particularly important as there are many breaches, especially in relation to social media. Over 90 % of consumers accept terms and conditions without reading them.
The event was organised within the implementation of the Jean Monnet Network „European Union and the Challenges of Modern Society (Legal Issues of Digitalization, Robotization, Cyber Security and Prevention of Hybrid Threats) Project id: 611293-EPP-1-2019-1-CZ-EPPJMO-NETWORK.