I think we should get started on this panel. It's super exciting. We're glad you're all here.
I just want to introduce this panel hosted by Lucas that is breaking tech monopolies in Europe,
a fire site chat with the European Commission, and I want to welcome Victor and Alexander from the European Commission.
Thank you so much for joining us, and I'll leave it to you, Lucas.
Here's a microphone for you to go back and forth.
Lucas, just new when you're not talking.
Okay. Everybody can hear me? It's okay.
So I'm really, really glad and very happy to see everybody here look at the room is completely full.
And it signs of successful that people are interested in the digital market sector.
And it's interesting in the work of the Commission.
And I think we will have a great time here discussing the future of the DMA.
So my name is Lucas Lasotta, and I work for the Free Software Foundation Europe,
and we have been engaged since the beginning on the legitimacy process of the digital market sector.
Now we need this enforcement.
And in this far chat, I would like to bring the Free Software community closer to the work of the regulator,
which the Commission is the enforcer of the digital market sector.
With that, I would like our guest, Alexander, and Victor, first to present yourself,
and also to explain a little bit what is the DMA, and why it's important for the Free Software community.
Well, thanks, Lucas, and thank you very much for having us today.
It's very, very pleased.
Well, my name is Alexandra, I'm a case handler in the DMA team.
I'm working in the EConnect, but it's the European Commission that is doing enforcement as Lucas is saying.
Maybe I was thinking that as a sort of introduction,
because I assume that most of you are aware of the DMA and what we tried to do with the DMA,
but perhaps for those that are a little bit less familiar,
maybe I can say a few words.
So then this question would be more meaningful for you.
So essentially in the DMA, we are regulating what we call digital gatekeepers.
Those large companies that were designated formally as gatekeepers,
they happen to be kind of the largest companies that provide the digital services.
And we are regulating certain services that we consider there are gateways.
They say services that sit between business users that can be developers,
and whoever is using this service in order to provide all the services.
And on the other side of the gateway, we have end users.
We have in the DMA plenty of obligations, because the DMA is to actually open up that gateway.
It's kind of to lower the level of dependency that business users and end users have on those services.
And these obligations range from data related to duplications,
such as a ban on data combination between services of the gatekeeper.
They also go into commercial, regulating commercial,
more commercial relationships between the gatekeepers and business users.
Interoperability obligations that was just talked right now.
We have also transparency obligations.
This is, we have a huge panel of obligations that apply to gatekeepers,
and that kind of the developers can benefit from.
So hi, I'm Victor, I'm a colleague of Alexander.
So also one of the case handlers, and I think one important thing to add is,
of course, the digital market sector is quite unique.
There is a commission as a regulator.
There is a lot, of course, needs to be enforced.
But the topic is very technical, of course.
We have to regulate these gatekeepers, how they're hardware, software,
interact with end users and business users.
So we have a very multiple multidisciplinary team.
Alexander is one of the lawyers.
We have a lot of economists as well to understand the business models
that these gatekeepers have and the impact that has on the obligations.
And one of the, we call ourselves a technologist,
software engineer in training, which is, of course, very important to understand
these obligations to really go down into a very deep technical level.
And to the impact that the MA will have on how these gatekeepers proceed.
So we really need like these different people, these different backgrounds,
and to fully do our regulatory work.
Excellent.
So as I correct and understood, the DAV is not about regulating competition
between the large companies, but also to level the playing feud,
allowing access seekers to access the type of technology and infrastructure
that is being created and gate kept by this companies.
And in this sense, I would like to know if, especially not only from the technical,
but also from the technical perspective, has been the free software community
useful for each one to understand how, for example, we just had the presentation
from Mark from FFA, who break down these concepts and how this interconnecting
to interpret and did the free software community help to understand better
these concepts on the enemy?
Yeah, maybe I can tackle the first question because the second is technical, so I believe that's a bit.
But yeah, I mean, it's not about competition between, as you say, between big companies.
I mean, ultimately, the main idea of the DMA is actually, as I was saying,
is just to lower the degree of dependency that we have on these services.
Of course, that means that everybody can benefit from them,
that also implies big companies, in the sense that they are business users as well,
and sometimes they offer services to each other.
And that means that initially, they are not excluded from being beneficiaries.
Now, that doesn't mean that it's to regulate their relationships,
but it's about breaking up that dependency to lower the degree of,
you know, that it's actually to make to eliminate intermediaries,
so to speak, and the degree of determination between these companies and the business users.
And that, of course, implies more about, you know, it's the ultimate goal.
Normally, we say that the DMA and it's written in the MA, and it's what we have in the law,
that is to make digital markets more contestable and fader.
And ultimately, the goal is actually to kind of leave the room for innovation,
and it's actually where developers and the free software community actually can benefit from,
it's just to have more space for them.
All right.
Indeed, that's our example points out.
The free software community is just kind of a special position in this relation,
because, of course, if you have interaction between gatekeepers,
those are both beholden to this law, but the free software community,
of course, has its unique characteristics in terms of
its abilities to benefit from the digital market sector,
and it also has a very unopposition in terms of being helpful and a discussion.
They not only have this very deep,
but can technical knowledge of how access to gatekeepers,
software and hardware, for example, could benefit them.
They're also very principal.
They really are focused on openness, on the freedom to do with your devices,
and so on what you want.
They have also an emphasis on security and privacy.
So they have this mission for openness.
So this brings a very unique interaction, and also a unique role in the interactions
that they can have also with us as a regulator.
Yeah, that's excellent.
Actually, I'm very happy that last year we met,
and also we had this exchange.
And during the whole year of 2024,
we had a very deep dialogue with the commission,
and the free software foundation,
Europe, together with partners from left-row,
a depth fair, and new taller.
And we worked together with some bit positions that the commission responded.
And I think it was a nice regulatory dialogue that we could establish in order to try to put the demands forward
in order to put the interests of the free software community over there.
And having what you both just said,
well, I am a lawyer by training, and I'm also a legal researcher.
And one thing that I learned in the law is that law always has some different interpretations.
So it's not very possible to say there's just one interpretation of the law.
And here at the DMA, we are dwelling perhaps with a clash of cultures.
We have the free software community,
which takes usually reads the DMA more permissively,
if you will, and looks in the latter of the law and say,
we need to interpret this broader, right?
But then we have, and the other sides,
we have apples and Microsoft of the life,
when reads the laws at all.
This is not how you are thinking,
it should be reading, it should be closed,
and the approach is much more restrictive.
How the commission deals with that?
Yeah, no, that's a good question.
Sorry, yeah.
So I mean, but this is not unique to the DMA.
It's actually about any regulation where you have the text that you have,
and you have to work with that.
And as you say, it may be interpreted sometimes,
different ways and the different actors,
of course, they are going to actually interpret that from their perspective,
and to their benefit.
And that's normal.
I mean, one key, maybe this is a very legal answer,
but one of the things that when it comes to interpreting these types of text
is that we have to look at the intent that is behind the legal test.
And for that, for example, the court is going to say,
okay, what's the intention of the legislators
when they were actually preparing their population?
Because the idea of this particular obligation, for example,
of this article.
And that's essentially what everybody has in mind when it comes to interpreting the DMA,
or whichever regulation.
I mean, that doesn't mean that we can have different interpretation.
And that doesn't mean that if you feel, okay,
mind interpretation, I think it's a little bit of a stretch,
so I'm just not going to raise the point,
or to kind of make the commission aware that this could be an interpretation.
We always appreciate that type of input,
because, as you say, we can interpret kind of the legal concepts that we have
from different perspectives, according to a little bit with the intention of the
college's leaders.
Now, if that goes too far, we will tell you in the sense that we would say,
well, that was not the intention behind the article.
You know, these are the limits that we have.
And of course, we have to work with the text that was approved.
But you know, it's good actually to have that input,
because sometimes that discussion leads to discover all the things and to realize.
And at the end of the day, that's always very helpful.
So it's not about saying, oh, please don't come.
It's not that we're saying that if you feel that maybe too far,
we're always very happy to listen to any type of argument and see,
okay, let's see if this makes sense legally speaking.
Sometimes what we have is actually developers coming to us with a very technical
argument and then it's our job with the techniques that we had and the
economies and the lawyers to say, okay, this is the way that we can translate
this argument into a kind of a legal argument.
And this is the way that it could be interpreted in these obligations.
So we'll always try to see how that fits.
If it goes too far, we will tell you.
Okay, no, yeah, that's quite interesting.
And because legally speaking, this is difficult, right?
And as I said, we need to see if the arguments,
they are sound logically and in the sense of the spirit and the letter of the law.
But now I would like to shift a little bit,
also not from the difficulties in illegal words,
but also in the technical role world.
And I do think that and that's why the teams in the commission,
they are much disciplinary, right?
We'll have lawyers, economists, we have technical people.
And what are the difficulties that when the commission is enforcing the DMA
are facing in order to bring gatekeepers into compliance?
Yes, and needs to be able to do our regulatory enforcement work.
We also need to have this very deep technical understanding of how these products work.
What kind of data is available?
Kind of interfaces or how do these hardware and software products interact?
What are the challenges that the business users and the end users encounter?
And we have to do this across all the obligations that the DMA as well,
of course, and they touch upon really different aspects of the digital market.
And we need to have this very broad coverage.
We just saw this presentation on app stores and side loading.
That has, again, it has its more contractual commercial components,
but it also has the technical components.
We have to understand how are these solutions implemented and what kind of are the intricacies?
How does that kind of translate to compliance with the law?
We also have provisions that say on circumvention, as they saw on how these,
what the user journey is, how is it actually usable towards end users?
And the second thing is we, people might have seen that regarding interoperability.
We actually opened what we call specification proceedings, which is one order two.
We have to basically an interaction with the gatekeeper kind of give guidance on how to comply with the law.
And that goes to an extreme technical detail.
We had it now with Apple.
Part of it is already in a public.
We cover everything from how a notification on iPhone works,
all the way to how we have a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi interaction with all the devices.
So we need to at all levels at all stages.
We have to to get into the technical details for this.
We interact with the gatekeeper.
We actually also have a sort of a regulatory ride to request that they explain to us how these things work,
even internally.
We have interactions with third parties, such as the free software community,
to understand how actually data they use by software developers,
by software engineers, how that affects the obligations.
We do of course also our own technical analysis,
but we have to combine all of these things on the technical side with the legal side,
with the economic side, to really properly do the regulatory work,
and then assess indeed the compliance with the law.
Yeah, that's not simple at all.
And right, since the sessions about a fire shed are a chat,
not only between ourselves, but also between the audience.
We'd like to make the last question,
so we also to give floor to the audience.
Looking ahead, which type of feedback do you would like to hear or to receive
from the free software community in terms of legal economy and even technical aspects?
Yeah, so, well, the things we need to understand two things.
We need to understand, well, how this service is work,
kind of what Victor is saying,
we need to understand the very technical aspect of these services,
and we also need to understand what are kind of the issues that the developers
and other business uses are actually facing.
So what we need to know, the type of input that we need,
not only legal, but it's also taking advantage to say,
well, I'm trying to do this.
I believe that the DMA is backing me up on this,
but these are the problems that I'm facing,
and that goes from when it comes to,
for example, simply trying to get an up through notisation,
for example, you can say,
well, these are all the problems that I'm facing,
and therefore I think that we have a problem here.
And the type of input that we are looking for is actually,
kind of the input that explains to us,
all those intricacies that we kind of know,
because we are not using that service in that kind of in that manner.
And anything like that, it would be very opposite.
Yeah, great.
And the technical is the same in your opinion.
Yeah, definitely.
So, indeed, any technical contributions are very welcome,
again, to support the work that we do to understand,
across all of these obligations, all the aspects.
On the technical side, how these products work,
how people are using them, and what problems they face,
how the DMA might contribute,
and need a free software community,
has this kind of very technical expertise,
sees its own special types of problems,
so again, any contributions very welcome.
Excellent.
Do we have some time for questions, Kern?
Yes, we have like five minutes.
Five minutes.
Excellent.
All right.
So, yeah, anyone has some questions.
Ready?
Some people? Okay, nice.
Hello.
Thank you for being here.
So, you mentioned that the objective of the DMA is to improve
the fairness of the market,
and that's pretty hard to measure.
So, what kind of evidence are you going to use to assess
the behavior of the gatekeepers,
the effectiveness of the remedies,
and the impact of the DMA itself?
Do you want to take a few?
Because we have five.
Because maybe see if there are similar questions,
maybe you can take.
Okay, so perhaps we can take another question.
So, that one is about metrics, right?
So, we're related to the other one.
How does the European Commission bring in?
How does the European Commission bring in open source community?
When it's not naturally coming to the institution.
So, in topics that Microsoft or Apple may be pushing forward,
how do you bring back the open source community?
Another one.
Do you want to start?
Let's start the discussion.
Okay.
So, your question, which is more about how to measure compliance?
When it comes only to, no, sorry.
When it comes not only to fairness, but I suppose also that applies to market
contestability, right, which is out kind of the two locals.
I mean, it's not that we have kind of a formula that we can apply and say,
okay, you know, if I add two plus two, then, you know, this is the result that I have.
It's more about sometimes the, it depends really on the obligation.
So, some obligations are really kind of obligations are result
and we need to see the results.
If the results are not there, then that means that something is wrong.
And then it's for us to analyze with the gatekeeper and say,
okay, gatekeeper, you've been putting this compliance solution on the table,
but we don't see the results.
So, where is the problem in all these processes,
but you are implementing this compliance solution?
There are other obligations that are less of our result.
And then there we have to see,
Hadoq with the gatekeeper, what they see that they are putting in place.
If we don't see, again, if we don't see that anything has changed,
then, or if we, for example, some developers are very vocal
and will come to us and will say, look, this is what they come,
by the gatekeeper is putting on the table.
We don't see any kind of appropriate implementation or maybe sometimes,
you know, on paper looks fine, but then the practical implementation
and a fit doesn't work.
So, it really depends a little bit on the context and the type of service
that we are regulating the type of gatekeepers,
and gatekeepers have different service.
I mean, they operate the same service in a different way.
So, it's not that we have kind of a metric, so to speak,
because it really, really depends on the actor,
it really depends on the service,
and it really depends also on what business you wanted to do with that service, sometimes.
And in terms of the engagement to the community,
it's definitely a valid concern.
We, of course, if we are aware of a specific organization or something,
or an advocacy group, that would be relevant to engagement for certain obligation,
we will try to seek out their contribution,
but at the same time, what we really strongly encourage is that,
everyone has the right to reach out to us,
and we have the, I think, obligation to actually process that and to engage further.
So, in that regard, if you would go to the website of the Commission of the Digital Markets Act,
there's actually a way to reach out to us to file a request or a concern,
and that will be followed by,
we actually have the necessity to be fair in the process,
and to listen to everybody who files a concern,
and that I think would be the primary way to reach out to us.
It's a bit more like you having to do the effort to get to us,
but once we are aware of these concerns,
and we are aware of relevant parties,
we will continue this engagement.
Excellent, perhaps a former question.
Yes, thank you.
I'm just sitting here listening to a session about breaking big tech monopolies,
while at the same time, one of the main sponsors of this event is one of those tech monopolies.
To me, that really feels like I'm sitting in an environmental conference,
organized by Greenpeace, but sponsor by Axel Mobile.
How do you feel like?
Well, I think I will take it, because they are our guests.
Yeah, I think diversity is the rule here in order to, for the success.
What I mean is that, yeah, it did perhaps we have some sponsors that they are gatekeepers of digital markets,
but they are not the only ones,
and I think we need to be diversified in order to depend on them.
And I think perhaps I don't know about Boston, because I'm not involved in the administration and the marketing,
but I am involved with the Free Software Foundation Europe,
and there we have a cap, no more than 20% of any donations for us
should come from corporate donations.
Although we receive money from some gatekeepers,
I think it's limited, so we are not dependent on them.
So perhaps I don't know how it works with Boston,
but they have some kind of policy, I think,
then I would not see too much of a problem here.
Karen, two minutes, okay, so one more question, then.
Yes, so indeed, we're talking about breaking techn monopolies.
If you would have to divide 100 energy points,
how much energy points would go to looking at the internal workings of the companies that may be
we don't really want to spend our intention on,
because they're not really, let's say, the core focus of what we would want,
and how many of those attention points which you want to actually
creating an internal digital market in Europe for the open source energy tips that are already there.
This question is more for the commission or for the,
do you want to take this one?
Yeah, we would like to, but could you perhaps refresh,
because I'm talking about attention points,
but what do you mean by attention points?
So you mentioned you actually understand the inner workings of the platform.
Yeah.
So it means that we as the government will spend a lot of time looking into the American big tech companies.
But we also want to create an European internal market, single markets,
on what competition.
So you have to talk about the European companies organization that try to build up something.
And how do you decide how to divide your focus?
Okay, so yeah, I'll replace the question.
So the question is, because we've been focusing on how the services of the,
we keep as work and we also have to kind of pay attention on kind of the European developers,
how they work and what they need, is that correct?
Okay, so no, I mean, it's, it's a bit of both actually,
because for example, we're applying to, coming back to the previous question about how we mess with compliance.
I mean, what I was saying is, well, it really depends on the case,
and it really depends on the service and what kind of use of that service one business uses to do.
And there we include actually European developers, which may have different business models,
different intentions.
And there is where we are actually paying attention to them.
It's not about only understanding how the services of the gatekeepers work,
which happen to be mostly non-European.
But it's more also about understanding kind of what European developers need,
in terms of the use that they do of those services,
and their business models, and kind of all the technical capabilities that they need to benefit from.
All right.
Excellent.
People, thank you very much for your undivided attention,
and please give some applause to Victor and Alicia.
Thank you.