BEP Joins 17 Signatories Urging UK Government and CMA to Deliver on Digital Competition Reform

Today, the Balanced Economy Project has joined 17 businesses, industry bodies, public figures and civil society organisations led by Mozilla including Coalition for App Fairness, Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), DuckDuckGo, Proton, Vivaldi, Which? and others in an open letter to the UK Government and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Together we call for more ambitious and urgent enforcement of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA).

The government says growth depends on investment. But investment does not flow into markets that incumbents have locked up. That is what the DMCCA was designed to address. When the CMA reads the government's strategic steer as a reason to go easy on dominant firms, it uses that steer against what the Act was designed to do. Parliament passed the DMCCA to open markets up. A growth steer applied as a reason for caution about incumbent business models pulls the CMA in the wrong direction. Our letter calls on the government and the CMA to:

• Urgently implement its roadmap of interventions and progress new SMS investigations.

• Provide clear accountability and transparency.

• Resource the Digital Markets Unit to match its mandate.

• Stand behind the Act. The DMCCA exists because Parliament determined that digital markets are not working for UK consumers and businesses.

For more information on the open letter.

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