New legislation, old application problems? Unraveling the complexities of applying EU law on digital technologies

In recent years, the European Union (EU) has adopted numerous new legal acts to address the challenges posed by digital transformation and regulate the emerging phenomena of the digital economy. Examples include the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, the Data Act, the Data Governance Act, and the Artificial Intelligence Act. However, these new acts do not operate in a regulatory vacuum, as well-established areas of regulation—such as competition law or data protection law—have already been used in EU law to address the challenges posed by digital technologies. The project therefore aims to better understand the different models of law enforcement that apply to the regulation of digital technologies in the EU, in the areas of competition law, data protection law, and the new legal acts mentioned above. The reason for focusing on law enforcement—understood as the procedural and institutional elements of the regulatory framework and the practices undertaken under it, such as the issuing of decisions by law enforcement authorities—is that the way in which it is regulated can determine whether the regulatory objectives are achieved. Moreover, practical aspects of law enforcement, such as who is involved in the proceedings or the role of non-parties, are often overlooked when analyzing the role of law in regulating digital technologies. In this project, we aim to develop a better understanding of different law enforcement models by analyzing, first, the provisions concerning law enforcement models, and second, selected decisions issued in the areas of competition law, data protection law, and the new legal acts mentioned above.