BERLIN, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- Germany's federal cartel office will focus on protecting competition in the digital industry, Bundeskartellamt president Andreas Mundt said during the presentation of the annual report 2017 on Monday.
Following the suggestions of the coalition agreement by the current German government, there are ongoing discussions about further modernizing the anti-trust law, in particular with regards to monitoring the abuse of market-dominating companies. "We will intensify our focus on the topic of e-commerce even further," said Mundt.
The increasing importance of large internet platforms bring up new anti-trust and economic issues. The mechanisms of the digital economy often lead to large markets being concentrated on individual companies such as Amazon, Facebook, or Google, a press representative explained to Xinhua on Monday. "The Bundeskartellamt, like other competition authorities worldwide, is paying particular attention to the network effects that arise on such platforms."
Mundt particularly addresses the planned projects from the coalition agreement. These would include transparency with regard to algorithms, artificial intelligence, dynamic pricing, as well as rankings and inter-dependencies in comparison portals.
To date, the German cartel office has imposed fines totaling 273 million euros (318 million U.S. dollars) in the current year 2018, compared to 66 million euros in 2017.
This increase is linked to the closure of a loophole in the German law which has allowed companies to escape a fine by restructuring their business. This would have affected anti-trust prosecution in recent years, said Mundt.
