Apple Appeals EU Digital Markets Act Interoperability Rules

[Sophisticatednut]

You’ve packed a lot of strong claims in here, but almost none of them line up with what the Impact Assessment actually says or even how EU policymaking even works. Not withstanding the sheer lack of evidence to back up your claims.

And The Impact Assessment (IA) you dismiss is built on extensive empirical data, including studies from the OECD, ECB, EIB, Furman Review (UK), Stigler Center (US), ACCC (Australia), and several academic analyses. These aren’t Brussels ideologues they’re economists and competition experts studying global market failures in digital sectors.
You’re treating the 2020 Impact Assessment as if it invented the rationale for the DMA from scratch, but the groundwork was laid years earlier. The Commission began addressing platform power under the 2015 Digital Single Market Strategy.

COM(2016)288 the Online Platforms Communication already recognized the imbalance in bargaining power and the limits of case-by-case enforcement. The 2018 IA behind the P2B Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2019/1150) further mapped structural issues in digital markets. It admitted that transparency measures alone were insufficient—exactly the problem the DMA was later designed to fix.

fundamental flaw in your reasoning is the assumption that the same government who just commissioned a study that blamed “burdensome regulation” as a primary factor for the region’s innovation shortfall will somehow spark new innovation by imposing even more complex regulations. That makes about as much sense as my fellow Americans who argue that the best way to reduce gun violence is to put more guns on the streets.

That framing assumes that any regulation is bad if the word “innovation” is nearby. But is that always true? If a regulation impacts 10 dominant firms and opens up space for thousands of smaller ones to compete more freely, do you call that burdensome, or corrective?

Paragraph 286 of the IA you yourself referred to literally addresses this trade-off. It says some gatekeepers may reduce their innovation spend in response but that the net effect is to increase overall innovation by making the platform economy more competitive. Why ignore the second half of that paragraph? Do you have any data showing that regulation targeting dominant firms actually reduces net innovation across markets? Because the studies cited in the IA say the opposite with data instead of vibes:

• OECD (2018): higher mark-ups in digital sectors correlate with lower innovation; top 10% of firms drove a 20% mark-up increase.
• ECB (2019): concentration in high-digital-intensity sectors rose significantly.
• Open consultation: 88% of business users report unfair treatment.
• 30+ EU antitrust cases against major platforms since 2015 many now closed with decisions, not allegations

Which of these facts do you think are wrong? What would your preferred empirical benchmark be?

It's the same magical thinking that assumes the same regulators who gave the world a plague of "you know websites use cookies" pop-ups and the Crowdstrike fiasco (and who still don't seem to realize they've broken the user experience or that they are at all responsible for the outage) are now telling Apple and Google how to redesign their mobile operating systems somehow are going to do all of this without making things worse. That officials who could not predict banner spam or "third parties having kernel access is bad" will somehow calibrate deep OS-level interoperability without collateral damage to users' security, privacy, or experiences?

And the cookie banners as I have repeatedly told you that’s not a failure of GDPR but of lack of EU wide technical standardization on consent flows. The ePrivacy Directive was supposed to provide that but got stalled. If anything, the lesson here is not “less regulation,” but better coordination for a wide EU guideline.

As for the Crowdstrike meltdown that we have gone over multiple times… what specific EU regulation forced Microsoft to architect their systems in a way that created a global failure point? From what I can tell, Apple complied with the same general rules and allowed them the same equal access without nuking half of the global corporate networks. So why is Microsoft’s design failure a criticism of EU regulation?

Simply citing an Impact Assessment that was clearly written in advance to justify the EC's preferred option does not change anything. You know the first draft failed the Commission’s Regulatory Scrutiny Board for “weak evidence”, right? And then on the second try it passed with a "positive-with-reservations" verdict that still listed “significant shortcomings” in the evidence base. Even after the rewrite the EC admits that innovation “cannot be reliably quantified,” so it relies almost entirely on qualitative scoring.

This is backward reasoning. First, the Regulatory Scrutiny Board is not part of the Commission, it’s an independent oversight body. Its job is exactly to push back on premature conclusions, and its criticisms were incorporated into the final IA. That’s how regulatory development is supposed to work not a sign of corruption but of process functioning.

Second, the IA does not pretend innovation can be precisely quantified because, as any economist will tell you, it can’t. That’s not a flaw, that’s intellectual honesty. The alternative would be to fabricate false precision via phantom GDP deltas.

And third The IA combines numerical cost-benefit tables, market-level data, and modeling, alongside qualitative scoring only where counterfactual innovation effects truly can’t be put in euro figures. So the claim that it “relies almost entirely on qualitative scoring” doesn’t match the document. It’s a genuine mixed-methods impact assessment.

Economists have pointed out that the document never even tries to model the specific prohibitions it proposes, instead assuming they will double R&D and magically raise EU GDP (Seriously, just read the two-and-a-half page executive summary of that PDF). The “do-nothing” baseline is there only because EU rules require it; it predicts fragmentation and entrenched “unfair practices” and then drops the idea in a paragraph. It wasn't seriously considered. Why not? Because the EC had already decided to act.


The DMA was based on an assessment that was initially panned by the EU’s own watchdog, that leans on cherry-picked complainants (lets pretend to be shocked that when asked if Apple's policies harmed innovation, Spotify said yes!), and that replaced cost-benefit analysis with magical assumptions is hardly a gold-standard, option-neutral report. It's clearly justification for a policy Brussels had already decided to push.

You’re referring to the Teece & Kahwaty critique, and yes they make that point. But they don’t actually offer a more viable framework. Their argument is that regulation stifles dynamic competition but they never explain how that theory should apply when platform dominance becomes self-reinforcing and exclusionary. the IA does not assume R&D will double. It presents one modeled outcome based on redirecting rent-seeking behavior toward more productive use. The idea isn’t that regulation creates GDP it’s that unclogging bottlenecks enables investment elsewhere.

First, the Commission proposes legislation… but it doesn’t adopt it. The DMA went through full co-decision by Parliament and Council, with amendments, trilogues, and a multiyear negotiation. The Regulatory Scrutiny Board did push back on the IA. and the final version was revised accordingly. That’s not evidence of political railroading. That’s literally the process functioning: propose 👉review 👉revise 👉legislate.

the Commission had already gathered enough evidence of market failure to act. The IA formalized the options, and the DMA was passed not by the Commission, but by co-decision between Parliament and Council. Blaming “Brussels” for policy you don’t like isn’t an argument it’s just lazy shorthand based on vibes and not facts.

Spotify, Epic, Deezer, Basecamp, trade associations, NCAs, academics all had input. That’s not cherry-picking; that’s a broad public consultation. If you think stakeholder feedback is invalid, then what is valid evidence in your book? Should these perspectives be ignored because they’re critical?

If a business user that relies on a platform tells regulators the terms are abusive or exclusionary is that “cherry-picking” or just how evidence-gathering works in asymmetric markets?

 

[Sophisticatednut]

?

The Eu doesn’t seem to have the correct approach according to credentialed sources. The DMA is an example of that.

Only if you think it should be something specific. Such as a new OS for example. This is plainly absurd to think Thisbis the intent when the goal is to protect the competitive market.

It’s just as absurd as the U.S. break up of standard oil and ATT instead of mandatory interoperability

 

[I7guy]

Only if you think it should be something specific. Such as a new OS for example. This is plainly absurd to think Thisbis the intent when the goal is to protect the competitive market.

The DMA and protecting the competitive market are diametrically opposed.

It’s just as absurd as the U.S. break up of standard oil and ATT instead of mandatory interoperability

The breakup of ATT was absurd. But they were the textbook definition of a monopoly.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

The DMA and protecting the competitive market are diametrically opposed.

Factually absurd

The breakup of ATT was absurd. But they were the textbook definition of a monopoly.

The fact ATT was a textbook example of a monopoly still makes it crazy that the solution was a breakup instead of what Europe did to encourage investments and competition.

 

[I7guy]

Factually absurd

100% on the money.

The fact ATT was a textbook example of a monopoly still makes it crazy that the solution was a breakup instead of what Europe did to encourage investments and competition.

The DMA is not an encouragement to innovation as the wsj and others note.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

100% on the money.

In what way is the existence of the epic stores, AltStore etc when they previously was unable to exist as a competitive alternative? That Amazon or Barnes & nobles etc now can inform their customers about their books etc is bad?

If Apple wants to maintain the use of IAP or the AppStore etc they need to innovate instead of locking down the alternatives?

How would you say we could measure if innovation and competition on the market increases instead of decreasing because Apple or Google can’t lock them in

The DMA is not an encouragement to innovation as the wsj and others note.

The large issue is you fore some reason thinks only vertical integration is the only thing that’s competing on. Instead of allowing inter service providers to provide their own innovative services solutions. Now alternative browser engines, payment solutions, store fronts. Revenue sharing models etc etc will be allowed to compete and prosper without needing to make a new phone with a new os to reinvent the entire car just because they want to provide a better breaks or engine filter.

 

[I7guy]

In what way is the existence of the epic stores, AltStore etc when they previously was unable to exist as a competitive alternative? That Amazon or Barnes & nobles etc now can inform their customers about their books etc is bad?

If Apple wants to maintain the use of IAP or the AppStore etc they need to innovate instead of locking down the alternatives?

How would you say we could measure if innovation and competition on the market increases instead of decreasing because Apple or Google can’t lock them in

The large issue is you fore some reason thinks only vertical integration is the only thing that’s competing on. Instead of allowing inter service providers to provide their own innovative services solutions. Now alternative browser engines, payment solutions, store fronts. Revenue sharing models etc etc will be allowed to compete and prosper without needing to make a new phone with a new os to reinvent the entire car just because they want to provide a better breaks or engine filter.

I am not getting into a philosophical conversation about innovation. But when the DMA was passed and it gave apples intellectual property to anybody who wants it. That is not innovation or competition and the wsj then had an opinion.

That is freeloading.

Obviously after two years and 1,000s of posts nobody is changing anybody’s mind on this.

 

[Stuwil]

Again, repeating the fallacy that “innovation doesn’t happen elsewhere, elsewhere doesn’t have the DMA, therefore the DMA doesn’t harm innovation” would get you flunked out of Intro to Logic.

And with that, I am absolutely and positively done with this thread 😀

See you in the next one.

Well can you prove me wrong
Because i suppose you can’t or else you would point to a country that is a wash with innovation
And the reason why you can’t say china is correct is because then you would have to admit that the Chinese are correct in their approach because it’s the only country where competition exists and because of that
Is the reason why the DMA exists

It’s ok to admit that the Chinese are correct in their approach

 

[Stuwil]

?

The Eu doesn’t seem to have the correct approach according to credentialed sources. The DMA is an example of that.

So the Chinese must have the correct approach then because innovation is alive and thriving there unlike other countries

Because there is no evidence that the DMA will stifle innovation there is opinions

 

[I7guy]

So the Chinese must have the correct approach then because innovation is alive and thriving there unlike other countries

So you’re suggesting the Chinese have a better approach then the EU.

Because there is no evidence that the DMA will stifle innovation there is opinions

Other then credentialed opinions such as the wsj. There is some evidence the DMA will stifle innovation.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

I am not getting into a philosophical conversation about innovation. But when the DMA was passed and it gave apples intellectual property to anybody who wants it. That is not innovation or competition and the wsj then had an opinion.

That is freeloading.

Lets even grant you the freeloading, we can still measure if the intended result happens or if the opposite happens. Do you have a link to the WSJ article you’re referencing?

Everyone can have an opinion, and opinions can also be objectively wrong or correct depending on what the real world shows.

Obviously after two years and 1,000s of posts nobody is changing anybody’s mind on this.

I’m not asking for a philosophical answer. I’m asking for a data based answer we can check in 2 years if I’m wrong or you’re wrong.

Well we can provide evidence for who’s opinion or analysis is correct and not just vibes.

What would you consider evidence in my favor and what would be counter evidence that supports you?

 

[I7guy]

Lets even grant you the freeloading, we can still measure if the intended result happens or if the opposite happens. Do you have a link to the WSJ article you’re referencing?

Everyone can have an opinion, and opinions can also be objectively wrong or correct depending on what the real world shows.

I’m not asking for a philosophical answer. I’m asking for a data based answer we can check in 2 years if I’m wrong or you’re wrong.

Well we can provide evidence for who’s opinion or analysis is correct and not just vibes.

What would you consider evidence in my favor and what would be counter evidence that supports you?

We can see what happens, but in two years I doubt not much will change except more freeloading in apples property. I’m sure some will make a successful business was from what used to be apples successful business.

 

[Stuwil]

So you’re suggesting the Chinese have a better approach then the EU.

Other then credentialed opinions such as the wsj. There is some evidence the DMA will stifle innovation.

Anyone can write an article and frame it a certain way in their favour.

Well it depends on how you look at it
If you and others are suggesting that the DMA is an innovation killer then it will be easy to tell because currently we can only point to one country that has proper competition in mobile OS’s and in search google is not number 1
And the same will be true a few years from now and the DMA will not stop innovation

 

[surferfb]

The Impact Assessment (IA) you dismiss is built on extensive empirical data, including studies from the OECD, ECB, EIB, Furman Review (UK), Stigler Center (US), ACCC (Australia), and several academic analyses. These aren’t Brussels ideologues they’re economists and competition experts studying global market failures in digital sectors.

You are correct that Furman Review, Stigler report, ACCC inquiry and ECB/EIB surveys all catalogue rising concentration and complaints from business users. None of them recommend the rulebook the EU adopted. In other words, the IA took a bunch of data that says “something may be wrong” and then assumed its preferred fix is the right one. In fact, the Furman Review warned that over-broad remedies risked “deterring entry and innovation” (emphasis mine).

Evidence of a headache is not evidence that the EU's pill is the cure.

You’re treating the 2020 Impact Assessment as if it invented the rationale for the DMA from scratch, but the groundwork was laid years earlier. The Commission began addressing platform power under the 2015 Digital Single Market Strategy.

COM(2016)288 the Online Platforms Communication already recognized the imbalance in bargaining power and the limits of case-by-case enforcement. The 2018 IA behind the P2B Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2019/1150) further mapped structural issues in digital markets. It admitted that transparency measures alone were insufficient—exactly the problem the DMA was later designed to fix.

Citing a paper trail back to the 2015 only proves the Commission had been rehearsing the same hypothesis for years. Recycling earlier studies may show policy momentum, but momentum is not evidence that the DMA’s rules will fix the problem.

I'd also point out this is another reason the IA's neutrality is in serious question. By the time it had arrived, the policy train had already left the station, so the it was validating a pre-chosen destination, not acting as a fair and balanced look at all options.

That framing assumes that any regulation is bad if the word “innovation” is nearby. But is that always true? If a regulation impacts 10 dominant firms and opens up space for thousands of smaller ones to compete more freely, do you call that burdensome, or corrective?

Paragraph 286 of the IA you yourself referred to literally addresses this trade-off. It says some gatekeepers may reduce their innovation spend in response but that the net effect is to increase overall innovation by making the platform economy more competitive. Why ignore the second half of that paragraph? Do you have any data showing that regulation targeting dominant firms actually reduces net innovation across markets? Because the studies cited in the IA say the opposite with data instead of vibes:

• OECD (2018): higher mark-ups in digital sectors correlate with lower innovation; top 10% of firms drove a 20% mark-up increase.
• ECB (2019): concentration in high-digital-intensity sectors rose significantly.
• Open consultation: 88% of business users report unfair treatment.
• 30+ EU antitrust cases against major platforms since 2015 many now closed with decisions, not allegations

Which of these facts do you think are wrong? What would your preferred empirical benchmark be?

Framing this as “regulation good, innovation bad” misses the point. The real question is "will the DMA increase or decrease innovation?" Paragraph 286 of the IA merely asserts the DMA will fix the problem with no proof to back it up while conceding the benefits are “complex to quantify.”

The studies the IA cites market power (higher mark-ups, rising concentration) but don't show forbidding self-preferencing or anti-steering causes more R&D or start-up entry.

Europe’s last big tech rule, GDPR, has been linked to a 20-30% fall in VC deals and lower early-stage investment relative to the U.S. That is a massive datapoint that points to my belief that sweeping, one-size rules aimed at a handful of big companies can chill the broader ecosystem. Until the Commission can model the effects (or even better, pilot them) the claim that the DMA will lift “overall innovation” is just wishful thinking.

And the cookie banners as I have repeatedly told you that’s not a failure of GDPR but of lack of EU wide technical standardization on consent flows. The ePrivacy Directive was supposed to provide that but got stalled. If anything, the lesson here is not “less regulation,” but better coordination for a wide EU guideline.

Blaming the pop-up plague on a missing “technical standard” is confusing cause and effect. GDPR created a legal duty to obtain consent, but the EU launched that rule without issuing a workable UX template and have spent the seven years twiddling their thumbs. The EU imposed a broad obligation, left the implementation details to “sort themselves out,” and have been chasing the fallout ever since. That sounds awfully familiar to their MO with the DMA.

As for the Crowdstrike meltdown that we have gone over multiple times… what specific EU regulation forced Microsoft to architect their systems in a way that created a global failure point? From what I can tell, Apple complied with the same general rules and allowed them the same equal access without nuking half of the global corporate networks. So why is Microsoft’s design failure a criticism of EU regulation?

Yes or no, had the EU not forced Microsoft to give Crowdstrike kernel access, would the outage have happened?

"All the good things that happen are because of the regulation, but the bad stuff has nothing to do with the regulation at all" isn't a serious argument.

This is backward reasoning. First, the Regulatory Scrutiny Board is not part of the Commission, it’s an independent oversight body. Its job is exactly to push back on premature conclusions, and its criticisms were incorporated into the final IA. That’s how regulatory development is supposed to work not a sign of corruption but of process functioning.

Second, the IA does not pretend innovation can be precisely quantified because, as any economist will tell you, it can’t. That’s not a flaw, that’s intellectual honesty. The alternative would be to fabricate false precision via phantom GDP deltas.

And third The IA combines numerical cost-benefit tables, market-level data, and modeling, alongside qualitative scoring only where counterfactual innovation effects truly can’t be put in euro figures. So the claim that it “relies almost entirely on qualitative scoring” doesn’t match the document. It’s a genuine mixed-methods impact assessment.

If the IA was actually an unbiased report as you claim, it wouldn't have originally been rejected because, in part, the baseline was “non-neutral” and said it “offers limited genuine choice to decision-makers.” Then, to fix it, they added an “Option 0” paragraph that predicts regulatory fragmentation and entrenched gatekeeper power, then immediately rules it out. That’s box-ticking, not a serious cost-benefit analysis. Which is why the RSB still said there were "significant shortcomings" in evidence, even while approving it. Their words, not mine.

Just because the report's authors went back after the fact to check a box doesn't change the fact that it WAS WRITTEN TO JUSTIFY THE DMA, not determine whether something like the DMA was needed. It's not me saying that, it's the EU's board that, despite your protestations, is made up of senior Commission officials. They said it was "non neutral". It is hundreds of pages that beg the question without properly analyzing the costs of the rules it was putting into place and imagining benefits without any proof whatsoever that the benefits would arise from the rules. That's not "genuine mixed-methods analysis" - it's cherry picking and making things up.

You’re referring to the Teece & Kahwaty critique, and yes they make that point. But they don’t actually offer a more viable framework. Their argument is that regulation stifles dynamic competition but they never explain how that theory should apply when platform dominance becomes self-reinforcing and exclusionary. the IA does not assume R&D will double. It presents one modeled outcome based on redirecting rent-seeking behavior toward more productive use. The idea isn’t that regulation creates GDP it’s that unclogging bottlenecks enables investment elsewhere.

It's not Teece & Kahwaty's job to write a version of the DMA for the Commission; it simply points out that the DMA’s Impact Assessment never connects documented market power and the specific, per-se prohibitions the law imposes. In a cost-benefit exercise the burden of proof sits with the regulator, not the critic: if the EU can't demonstrate that the obligations will do what they say, the proper response isn't “well, the critics didn’t supply their own spreadsheet.”

First, the Commission proposes legislation… but it doesn’t adopt it. The DMA went through full co-decision by Parliament and Council, with amendments, trilogues, and a multiyear negotiation. The Regulatory Scrutiny Board did push back on the IA. and the final version was revised accordingly. That’s not evidence of political railroading. That’s literally the process functioning: propose 👉review 👉revise 👉legislate.

the Commission had already gathered enough evidence of market failure to act. The IA formalized the options, and the DMA was passed not by the Commission, but by co-decision between Parliament and Council. Blaming “Brussels” for policy you don’t like isn’t an argument it’s just lazy shorthand based on vibes and not facts.

I agree the formal sequence is "propose 👉 review 👉 revise 👉 legislate", but when the same institution drafts the proposal, supplies the evidence, and participates in the trilogue that finalizes the text, it is hardly proof that the underlying analysis received a truly independent reality-check.

Again, Evidence of Market failure (which I would dispute, but giving it to you for purposes of argument) is not proof that the DMA's draconian regulations will fix anything. In fact, I'd argue they're going to make the problem worse and just act as a drag on innovation for everyone. Economically, the burden of proof for an ex-ante, per-se regime should be higher than for a case-by-case approach. And I'd argue they didn't even meet the burden of proof for a case-by-case approach.

Spotify, Epic, Deezer, Basecamp, trade associations, NCAs, academics all had input. That’s not cherry-picking; that’s a broad public consultation. If you think stakeholder feedback is invalid, then what is valid evidence in your book? Should these perspectives be ignored because they’re critical?

If a business user that relies on a platform tells regulators the terms are abusive or exclusionary is that “cherry-picking” or just how evidence-gathering works in asymmetric markets?

I am not saying that stakeholder testimony is useless; the point is that self-selected complainants are evidence of grievance, not of the systemic effects of the cure.

The 2020 public consultation drew fewer than 600 business-user responses across the entire EU, and over 70% came from firms that already had an open dispute with at least one “gatekeeper.” That is not a representative sample of the millions of developers, merchants and advertisers that actually trade on the platforms. End-user input was tiny (under 200 replies) and largely ignored in the IA’s option scoring, while entire downstream sectors like hotels, publishers, consumer-goods brands are almost completely absent. That is in part why the European Parliamentary Research Service said the IA “does not provide policy-makers with a neutral baseline and offers limited genuine choice.”

Spotify telling regulators “Apple’s 30% fee hurts me” is a data point; it does not prove that the DMA will raise innovation rule-by-rule cost-benefit analysis, which again, the EU concedes it could not produce.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

We can see what happens, but in two years I doubt not much will change except more freeloading in apples property. I’m sure some will make a successful business was from what used to be apples successful business.

So give me some objective metrics, you must have something concrete right?
If iPhone users in EU get access tobapps that isn’t allowed in the U.S.? Apple relaxing their restrictions such as allowing Virtual machines to be used? Allowing Siri competitors to enter? Or is it just apples level of margins that is of relevance?

Like something like this below?

Use Difference-in-Differences (DiD):

• Compare developer behavior and app ecosystem trends in the EU vs. non-DMA markets (US, UK, Japan).
• If adoption of alt app stores, payment systems, or OS features increases in the EU but not elsewhere, you can infer DMA-driven impact.

Qualitative follow-up:

• Interviews with developers about real vs. theoretical access.
• Case studies of third-party app stores or browsers trying to gain traction.
• Revenue concentration from the gatekeeper to the developers shifts with same marketshare?

if Apple or Google goes from 30% market share / 70% revenue share to 30% / 40%, that’s a strong signal that:

• Developers are monetizing more freely
• Platform control over downstream payments has weakened
• The DMA is having structural effects on rent concentration.

Increased Contestability

• Presence of third-party app stores (Epic Games Store, Setapp, AltStore etc) available and functional on iOS/Android in EU.
• Number of apps available via sideloading or alternate distribution (growth vs. 2023 baseline).
• Developer revenue share from off-platform payments (e.g. non-Apple IAP uptake).
• Reduced platform commission rates, especially for developers below certain threshold

 

[I7guy]

Anyone can write an article and frame it a certain way in their favour.

But not every one has the credentials of the Wall Street journal.

Well it depends on how you look at it
If you and others are suggesting that the DMA is an innovation killer then it will be easy to tell because currently we can only point to one country that has proper competition in mobile OS’s and in search google is not number 1
And the same will be true a few years from now and the DMA will not stop innovation

It’s up to you how you interpret it. Look g at a today view I’d say the wsj was straight on.

 

[I7guy]

So give me some objective metrics, you must have something concrete right?
If iPhone users in EU get access tobapps that isn’t allowed in the U.S.? Apple relaxing their restrictions such as allowing Virtual machines to be used? Allowing Siri competitors to enter? Or is it just apples level of margins that is of relevance?

Like something like this below?

All of that is polluted and tainted data as it is using apples successful business to fund free of charge startups.

That is not measuring anything useful. Of course devs would like 0% compassion, cash back, reward points and etc. but that’s not the way it works when one engages with a vendor.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

All of that is polluted and tainted data as it is using apples successful business to fund free of charge startups.

That is not measuring anything useful. Of course devs would like 0% compassion, cash back, reward points and etc. but that’s not the way it works when one engages with a vendor.

so what would be measuring something useful according to you? What metrics would you use to gauge the successes or failure of the DMA? Considering you think the ones I provided are tainted and unusable, fair enough so give me an alternative you might accept and we can go back and fact check later on

Edit: again what WSJ are you referring to? What where they right on?

 

[I7guy]

so what would be measuring something useful according to you? What metrics would you use to gauge the successes or failure of the DMA? Considering you think the ones I provided are tainted and unusable, fair enough so give me an alternative you might accept and we can go back and fact check later on

Edit: again what WSJ are you referring to? What where they right on?

There is no metric to make this meaningful. As long as the metric involves measuring a free of charge option ripped from Apple, it’s a sham.

Edit: wsj is wall street journal. Multiple people read the same article and it’s behind a paywall. It’s also not the only only opinion.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

There is no metric to make this meaningful. As long as the metric involves measuring a free of charge option ripped from Apple, it’s a sham.

So it’s an unfalsifiable metric then… the DMA will lower innovation because vibes, but I can’t prove it because vibes

If you just think it’s bad for Apple and everything else doesn’t matter that’s more honest position. Even if we saw hypothetically 100x more innovation it would still be invalid because Apple is losing in some way you philosophically don’t vibe with.

Even if Apple stoped all innovation or 100x their innovation tonsatt competitive it would be invalid because they are pushed by the government and by by the. Arket or their own will?

Edit: wsj is wall street journal. Multiple people read the same article and it’s behind a paywall. It’s also not the only only opinion.

well you’re referring to something i can’t find so 🤷‍♂️. And I know who the WSJ is but I can’t find any relevant article describing your point duchess an opinion piece or analysis of the DMA. And it being correct with what have developed until today

 

[I7guy]

So it’s an unfalsifiable metric then… the DMA will lower innovation because vibes, but I can’t prove it because vibes

If you just think it’s bad for Apple and everything else doesn’t matter that’s more honest position. Even if we saw hypothetically 100x more innovation it would still be invalid because Apple is losing in some way you philosophically don’t vibe with.

Even if Apple stoped all innovation or 100x their innovation tonsatt competitive it would be invalid because they are pushed by the government and by by the. Arket or their own will?

Basically when the DMA gives away all of apples intellectual property to those who can grab it for free, measuring innovation that accrues from it is meaningless. Because the freeloaders had a starting point with someone else’s intellectual property.

well you’re referring to something i can’t find so 🤷‍♂️. And I know who the WSJ is but I can’t find any relevant article describing your point duchess an opinion piece or analysis of the DMA. And it being correct with what have developed until today

I posted a link somewhere. I’ll see if I can find it.

 

[surferfb]

I posted a link somewhere. I’ll see if I can find it.

Assuming this is the article you mean, @I7guy

The Tech Industry Is Huge—and Europe’s Share of It Is Very Small

A risk-averse business culture and complex regulations have stifled innovation on the continent, weighing on its future.

www.wsj.com

Key quotes (emphasis mine)”:
Only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies are European, despite Europe having a larger population and similar education levels to the U.S. and accounting for 21% of global economic output. None of the top 10 companies investing in quantum computing are in Europe.

“Taxes are higher, and regulations designed to corral big business become a costly and time-consuming headache for startups. It is easier for large AI companies in the U.S. or China to move to Europe than “growing out of Europe and to have to invest from the start to satisfy a much more complex regulatory framework,” said Sebastian Steinhäuser, chief strategy and operating officer at German software giant SAP.“

European businesses spend 40% of their IT budgets on complying with regulations, according to a recent survey by Amazon.

Software company Bird, one of the Netherlands’ most successful startups, said recently it plans to move its main operations out of Europe to the U.S., Dubai and other locations due to restrictive AI regulation. “Stop regulating, Europe. We might be the first, but we won’t be the last (to leave),” Robert Vis, the company’s founder, wrote on his LinkedIn page.

The Draghi report, said McAfee at MIT, did a great job diagnosing Europe’s lagging tech sector, but then urged governments to spend more public money spurring the sector, missing the point that it was private money that was absent—most likely due to regulation and other problems. Said McAfee: “That’s when I went from nodding my head in agreement to banging it on the table.”

 

[Sophisticatednut]

Basically when the DMA gives away all of apples intellectual property to those who can grab it for free, measuring innovation that accrues from it is meaningless. Because the freeloaders had a starting point with someone else’s intellectual property.

So effectively an unprovable statement. Despite the ability to showntheir intellectual property is neither stolen nor provided for free. Both through the developer agreement as well as the sale of the device occurring.

Seems like a stronger case than the Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. case over APIs.
Considering in their case they actually copied someone else’s code while in this case the APIs are just interacted with on other users devices.

Assuming this is the article you mean, @I7guy

The Tech Industry Is Huge—and Europe’s Share of It Is Very Small

A risk-averse business culture and complex regulations have stifled innovation on the continent, weighing on its future.

www.wsj.com

Key quotes (emphasis mine)”:
Only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies are European, despite Europe having a larger population and similar education levels to the U.S. and accounting for 21% of global economic output. None of the top 10 companies investing in quantum computing are in Europe.

“Taxes are higher, and regulations designed to corral big business become a costly and time-consuming headache for startups. It is easier for large AI companies in the U.S. or China to move to Europe than “growing out of Europe and to have to invest from the start to satisfy a much more complex regulatory framework,” said Sebastian Steinhäuser, chief strategy and operating officer at German software giant SAP.“

European businesses spend 40% of their IT budgets on complying with regulations, according to a recent survey by Amazon.

Software company Bird, one of the Netherlands’ most successful startups, said recently it plans to move its main operations out of Europe to the U.S., Dubai and other locations due to restrictive AI regulation. “Stop regulating, Europe. We might be the first, but we won’t be the last (to leave),” Robert Vis, the company’s founder, wrote on his LinkedIn page.

The Draghi report, said McAfee at MIT, did a great job diagnosing Europe’s lagging tech sector, but then urged governments to spend more public money spurring the sector, missing the point that it was private money that was absent—most likely due to regulation and other problems. Said McAfee: “That’s when I went from nodding my head in agreement to banging it on the table.”

EU is a large but fractured market unfortunately. If you’re in German, it’s not so easy to expand to France, Sweden or Poland etc. EU tried to unify it under a single system but it’s a slow process 🤷‍♂️

EU launches strategy to dismantle internal market barriers and boost competitiveness

The European Commission has unveiled a comprehensive plan to revitalize the EU’s single market by reducing internal barriers that hinder cross-border trade and economic growth. This initiative aims to enhance the EU’s competitiveness, particularly in the face of escalating global trade tensions...

www.eureporter.co

 

[I7guy]

So effectively an unprovable statement. Despite the ability to showntheir intellectual property is neither stolen nor provided for free. Both through the developer agreement as well as the sale of the device occurring.

Seems like a stronger case than the Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. case over APIs.
Considering in their case they actually copied someone else’s code while in this case the APIs are just interacted with on other users devices.

EU is a large but fractured market unfortunately. If you’re in German, it’s not so easy to expand to France, Sweden or Poland etc. EU tried to unify it under a single system but it’s a slow process 🤷‍♂️

EU launches strategy to dismantle internal market barriers and boost competitiveness

The European Commission has unveiled a comprehensive plan to revitalize the EU’s single market by reducing internal barriers that hinder cross-border trade and economic growth. This initiative aims to enhance the EU’s competitiveness, particularly in the face of escalating global trade tensions...

www.eureporter.co

Apple does not have control of their platform because the rights to it have been stolen by the DMA. It’s very provable. The DMA is the proof.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

Let’s get something straight first: EU policymaking is fundamentally administrative and precautionary, not adversarial or litigation driven like in the U.S. The Impact Assessment (IA) is not a neutral “jury” evaluating guilt or innocence, and neither is the commission( it’s the executive branch); it’s a structured tool used by the Commission to justify legislative proposals through documented evidence, stakeholder feedback, and legal precedent. It’s part of a multi institutional process where Parliament and Council act as political checks if the IA were merely bureaucratic rubberstamping, the DMA would’ve been enacted instantly. It wasn’t. The commission has zero power to pass legislation. It’s fully within the power of parliament( 720 elected representatives) and council( 27 elected state representatives)

And please read up on how it’s done in EU.

The ABC of EU Law

You are correct that Furman Review, Stigler report, ACCC inquiry and ECB/EIB surveys all catalogue rising concentration and complaints from business users. None of them recommend the rulebook the EU adopted. In other words, the IA took a bunch of data that says “something may be wrong” and then assumed its preferred fix is the right one. In fact, the Furman Review warned that over-broad remedies risked “deterring entry and innovation” (emphasis mine).

Evidence of a headache is not evidence that the EU's pill is the cure.


Citing a paper trail back to the 2015 only proves the Commission had been rehearsing the same hypothesis for years. Recycling earlier studies may show policy momentum, but momentum is not evidence that the DMA’s rules will fix the problem.

You’re arguing that identifying structural market failures doesn’t justify regulatory action unless the precise fix is proven in advance to increase innovation with quantifiable certainty. But that’s not how public policy works, especially in digital markets where counterfactuals are notoriously hard to model. And the goal is a healthy competitive environment leads to innovation.

Yes, the Furman Review cautioned against overbroad remedies. It also recommended an ex ante code of conduct for digital platforms, interoperability mandates, and data access obligations remarkably similar to the DMA’s core obligations. Same goes for the ACCC’s recommendations in Australia, which included anti-self-preferencing and stronger merger oversight. You’re cherrypicking their caveats while ignoring their core conclusions.

Sound familiar? That’s basically the DMA’s core obligations. Same with the ACCC in Australia. You’re citing their cautions while ignoring their main recommendations.

You claim the DMA’s IA assumes the policy works because “something must be done.” But that’s a mischaracterization. The IA documents specific bottlenecks( that’s what a gatekeeper is) with control over data, app stores, OS-level integration and justifies each core obligation in response to those mechanisms. It doesn’t assume the DMA works by default; it evaluates a menu of options and discards others (including pure antitrust) as insufficiently timely or effective.

So yes, those reports were evidence of a systemic “headache.”

I'd also point out this is another reason the IA's neutrality is in serious question. By the time it had arrived, the policy train had already left the station, so the it was validating a pre-chosen destination, not acting as a fair and balanced look at all options.

Framing this as “regulation good, innovation bad” misses the point. The real question is "will the DMA increase or decrease innovation?" Paragraph 286 of the IA merely asserts the DMA will fix the problem with no proof to back it up while conceding the benefits are “complex to quantify.”

The studies the IA cites market power (higher mark-ups, rising concentration) but don't show forbidding self-preferencing or anti-steering causes more R&D or start-up entry.

You accuse the IA of “not proving” that forbidding anti-steering or self preferencing will increase R&D. But innovation isn’t only about R&D spend it’s about diffusion, entry, and recombination. And again, the Paragraph doesn’t “merely assert”; it explicitly references studies ( OECD 2018, IMF 2019) that link lower market conmtenstability with declining innovation output.

Claiming the Commission had its mind made up ignores how EU law works. If the policy was predetermined, why did Parliament and Council spend over a year negotiating it? Why were stakeholders consulted multiple times after 2020? This wasn’t regulatory theater. it was the administrative process: propose, assess, amend, legislate. That’s how co-decision works. And The IA isn’t a blankslate scientific experiment, It evaluates a preferred policy option, as that’s its function. And the RSB initially raised issues with the baseline. That’s not a scandal but it’s job description according to good legislation guidelines. The final version was approved after revision, exactly how the process is supposed to work.

You’re demanding an RCT level proof that banning self preferential boosts innovation. That’s not how structural regulation works and it never has. The IA identifies bottlenecks: barriers to market entry, limited interoperability, fee extraction. The removal of those barriers logically increases available capital, platform independence, and R&D allocation downstream.

If you believe gatekeeper lockin stimulates innovation, your burden is to prove it, because the available data doesn’t seem to support it.

From Furnans report:

Many stakeholders also submitted evidence to the Panel arguing that such a trend can be harmful to competition. In particular, that this strategy can create barriers to entry, as new firms need to offer an entire ecosystem by competing across a range of related markets to survive. Others argued that where multi-market firms hold a strategic gateway position in one market, they are then able to leverage that position in adjacent markets, give themselves an advantage through self-preferencing, and obtain an unfair advantage through holding of data and imitation of rivals’ innovations.

Sounds like a few people here favorite argument. Just make a new phone and an entire ecosystem just because you wanted to provide a better messaging or browser than the stock…

Europe’s last big tech rule, GDPR, has been linked to a 20-30% fall in VC deals and lower early-stage investment relative to the U.S. That is a massive datapoint that points to my belief that sweeping, one-size rules aimed at a handful of big companies can chill the broader ecosystem. Until the Commission can model the effects (or even better, pilot them) the claim that the DMA will lift “overall innovation” is just wishful thinking.

Blaming the pop-up plague on a missing “technical standard” is confusing cause and effect. GDPR created a legal duty to obtain consent, but the EU launched that rule without issuing a workable UX template and have spent the seven years twiddling their thumbs. The EU imposed a broad obligation, left the implementation details to “sort themselves out,” and have been chasing the fallout ever since. That sounds awfully familiar to their MO with the DMA.

That’s simply incorrect. The cookiebanner chaos is rooted in the ePrivacy Directive, not GDPR. Directives set objectives but leave design and enforcement to Member States so national regulators, not EU, decided how to implement consent flows. The ePrivacy Regulation (which would have harmonized interfaces) has been stalled by the Council, not Brussels.

GDPR never dictated UX it established a horizontal data-protection framework for every actor handling personal data, from Facebook but also your dentist, your school, your landlord or mechanic. It’s technology-neutral, defines specifies legal principles (lawfulness, purpose limitation, transparency), and deliberately avoids prescribing UX design. That was always the job of the proposed ePrivacy Regulation.


The GDPR is not a digital services regulation. It is a horizontal data protection framework that applies across all sectors online and offline, private and public, analog and digital. That’s why:

• It applies to Facebook and Google, but also to your local dentist, hospital, or car rental agency.
• It governs how data is processed (lawfulness, transparency, purpose limitation), not who processes it or in what kind of interface.
• The GDPR is technology-neutral by design. It doesn’t assume digital interfaces or prescribe implementation modalities.
• It’s a framework law, not a design spec. It defines rights and obligations
• The UX/consent interface issue falls under the proposed but still-stalled ePrivacy Regulation, which would have tackled interface-level consistency for online tracking (including cookie banners).

And the Commission couldn’t mandate a universal consent UI even if it wanted to.
The Council sought broader exemptions for businesses and law enforcement, while Parliament pushed for stricter privacy safeguards.
But guess what? Member States blocked it, not the Commission. Blame the Council, not Brussels.

And just because some VC portfolios tanked after GDPR doesn’t mean the law was bad. It could just mean their bets relied on exploitative data models that couldn’t survive basic consent. Either way, that critique doesn’t generalize to the DMA, which targets 10 entrenched gatekeepers,not the entire economy.

Yes or no, had the EU not forced Microsoft to give Crowdstrike kernel access, would the outage have happened?

Again the EU court did not “force” kernel access. That’s Microsoft PR spin. The requirement was nondiscriminatory API access under competition law.
Commission made it very clear: Microsoft is free to secure its systems however it wants, as long as it doesn’t sabotage competitors.

Has they implemented it better it wouldn’t have happened either.

"All the good things that happen are because of the regulation, but the bad stuff has nothing to do with the regulation at all" isn't a serious argument.

Blaming a security lapse on that is a failure of design and testing, not a legal mandate.
That’s not regulatory overreach… it’s basic competition law written before Microsoft was founded.

If the IA was actually an unbiased report as you claim, it wouldn't have originally been rejected because, in part, the baseline was “non-neutral” and said it “offers limited genuine choice to decision-makers.” Then, to fix it, they added an “Option 0” paragraph that predicts regulatory fragmentation and entrenched gatekeeper power, then immediately rules it out. That’s box-ticking, not a serious cost-benefit analysis. Which is why the RSB still said there were "significant shortcomings" in evidence, even while approving it. Their words, not mine.

Just because the report's authors went back after the fact to check a box doesn't change the fact that it WAS WRITTEN TO JUSTIFY THE DMA, not determine whether something like the DMA was needed. It's not me saying that, it's the EU's board that, despite your protestations, is made up of senior Commission officials. They said it was "non neutral". It is hundreds of pages that beg the question without properly analyzing the costs of the rules it was putting into place and imagining benefits without any proof whatsoever that the benefits would arise from the rules. That's not "genuine mixed-methods analysis" - it's cherry picking and making things up.}

And of course the RSB flagged early issues that’s its job. The IA was revised accordingly and resubmitted. You’re cherrypicking quotes from their first opinion while ignoring the final one, which approved the IA. Regulatory scrutiny isn’t proof of failure, it’s the process working.
And again: neutrality is not the same as passivity. IAs are designed to assess the impact of proposals, not neutrally weigh all possible futures.

The Impact assessment isn’t written in a vacuum, but to examine the viability of different options against a set of policy objectives already adopted by co-legislators. The fact that the Commission had already acknowledged structural asymmetries in digital markets back in 2016 isn’t a flaw it’s institutional memory. You’re treating that as evidence of bias when it’s just responsible policymaking over time.

surferfb said:{It's not Teece & Kahwaty's job to write a version of the DMA for the Commission; it simply points out that the DMA’s Impact Assessment never connects documented market power and the specific, per-se prohibitions the law imposes. In a cost-benefit exercise the burden of proof sits with the regulator, not the critic: if the EU can't demonstrate that the obligations will do what they say, the proper response isn't “well, the critics didn’t supply their own spreadsheet.”


I agree the formal sequence is "propose 👉 review 👉 revise 👉 legislate", but when the same institution drafts the proposal, supplies the evidence, and participates in the trilogue that finalizes the text, it is hardly proof that the underlying analysis received a truly independent reality-check.}

That isn’t a simple “you say, I say” exercise it’s a mixed methods approach combining empirical studies, economic theory, stakeholder feedback, and scenario modeling. If you demand a row-by-row spreadsheet with predicted euro impacts for every Article, you’re holding the IA to a U.S style rulemaking standard (APA/OMB Circular A-4) that the EU never adopted. The Impact assessment has met its mandate under the Better Regulation Guidelines. it provides reasonable justification for each obligation, and it flags where quantification is infeasible rather than pretending false precision.

And the European Commission has a monopoly on legislative initiative in the EU. That’s how the system is designed under the treaties. Independence is ensured through the Council and Parliament, not through artificial separation between analysis and drafting. If your model of neutrality is U.S style independent agencies or court-driven rulemaking, you’re looking at the wrong system.

Again, Evidence of Market failure (which I would dispute, but giving it to you for purposes of argument) is not proof that the DMA's draconian regulations will fix anything. In fact, I'd argue they're going to make the problem worse and just act as a drag on innovation for everyone. Economically, the burden of proof for an ex-ante, per-se regime should be higher than for a case-by-case approach. And I'd argue they didn't even meet the burden of proof for a case-by-case approach.


I am not saying that stakeholder testimony is useless; the point is that self-selected complainants are evidence of grievance, not of the systemic effects of the cure.

You’re conceding for argument’s sake that there’s a market failure. entrenched dominance, tipping effects, user lock-in, suppressed innovation at the ecosystem level. Good. So what problem does the DMA supposedly “make worse”? Because without defining that, your claim has no traction and no meaning.

If your answer is “innovation,” then back it up:

• Innovation for whom? Incumbents who’ve scaled by leveraging cross-service bundling and self preferences?
• Or innovation from competitors, rivals, startups that has to face the gatekeeper bottlenecks?

The IA and accompanying studies (see Annex 11, Section 7.3) make it pretty clear the innovation drag is on the non-gatekeepers, not the gatekeepers themselves. If you want to argue that removing structural barriers, like exclusive defaults, ranking manipulation, or anti-steering clauses somehow reduces innovation, you’ll need a theory that explains how gatekeeper control stimulates competition at the margins. Where is that theory? Where is that evidence?

• Which of those harms is being intensified?
• By what mechanism?
• For whom?

Because vague appeals to “innovation drag” aren’t analysis, but again just vibes. Vague vibes aren’t a rebuttal to documented market power and persistent enforcement failures under Articles 101/102.

As for your “burden of proof” argument:

Yes, ex-ante regimes carry a higher upfront burden but not an impossible one. The DMA doesn’t need 100% certainty that every Article will optimize innovation output in every market. It needs to show that:

• Certain entrenched practices ( tying, anti-steering, default preinstallation) routinely distort market access.
• Remedies that restore contestability, even if blunt, are proportionate to the structural harm.
• The administrative cost is lower than the social and economic cost of delay (as we saw post-Android and Shopping)

The DMA clears that bar as it’s built on article 101 and 102 though decades of legal precedent. If you think it doesn’t, then you need to spell out:

• What alternative mechanism would work better?
• Why the case-by-case model: which was already tried and stalled for over two decade is more effective despite being slower, reactive, and often toothless?

The per-se prohibitions mirror problems already identified in case-by-case rulings that took years and had limited effect. The point isn’t to rerun the litigation, it’s to preempt known bottlenecks before they harden further.
If you think this still doesn’t meet a “case-by-case” threshold, show your standard. Because “I don’t like it” isn’t one.

The 2020 public consultation drew fewer than 600 business-user responses across the entire EU, and over 70% came from firms that already had an open dispute with at least one “gatekeeper.” That is not a representative sample of the millions of developers, merchants and advertisers that actually trade on the platforms. End-user input was tiny (under 200 replies) and largely ignored in the IA’s option scoring, while entire downstream sectors like hotels, publishers, consumer-goods brands are almost completely absent. That is in part why the European Parliamentary Research Service said the IA “does not provide policy-makers with a neutral baseline and offers limited genuine choice.”

You’re cherry-picking one early consultation to imply the DMA was rushed through based on a handful of noisy complainants. That doesn’t hold up.

The 2020 consultation and inception impact assessment were just early stages of a multi-phase evidence-gathering process. Since then, the Commission ran:

• A full legislative proposal consultation (2020-2021)
• Stakeholder feedback during 2022,2023,2024 and now
• Feedback from stakeholders with experts before mandating specific actions.
• Hearings and workshops in Parliament,
• Feedback through trilogues involving national competition authorities, trade associations, and even the gatekeepers themselves,
• Ongoing input via the High-Level Group and enforcement consultations.

So no, this wasn’t a policy scribbled on Spotify’s napkin.
That grievance was backed by antitrust precedent and confirmed by the Commission. You’re cherry-picking again. Spotify wasn’t the only voice; app developers, publishers, and advertisers raised identical concerns. The Commission didn’t write DMA obligations based on Spotify’s press releases it is as inhale stated based on decades of legal procedures and years of enforcement experience under Articles 101 and 102, plus documented platform behavior across markets.

Spotify telling regulators “Apple’s 30% fee hurts me” is a data point; it does not prove that the DMA will raise innovation rule-by-rule cost-benefit analysis, which again, the EU concedes it could not produce.

That’s a legal data point. And it’s related to the market competition. And again not supposed to

You keep insisting the IA failed because it didn’t operate like a U.S. court brief. But that’s a category error. The EU Commission is not a judge or a court, it’s a policymaking body operating under administrative law. The DMA isn’t a sentence but policy proposal that was made, built on the best available evidence, wide consultation, and public interest logic.

If you want to argue that status quo platform dominance is net good, or that innovation flourishes under gatekeeper control, that’s your burden. But don’t claim the EU failed to justify its action just because it didn’t follow your preferred epistemology. The DMA was passed after extensive scrutiny and democratic input. You’re free to critique it, but don’t pretend the process was illegitimate just because it didn’t follow U.S. policy procedures. They aren’t written with the same intention or according to the same guidelines.

Understanding the DMA debate requires understanding how the EU actually works, not assuming it mirrors U.S. government structure. Here’s a quick breakdown:​

• EU Directives ≠ binding federal law. They’re framework instructions to EU Member States, who must implement them via national legislation (e.g. the ePrivacy Directive). Think: federal guidelines with state-level implementation leeway.
• EU Regulations = directly binding law across all EU Member States without national transposition. The DMA is a Regulation—it’s enforced as-is, uniformly, like a federal statute applied across all states.
• EU Law = a hierarchy. Regulations > Directives > National Law, and subject to interpretation by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). Supremacy is well-established.
• European Commission = executive + civil service. It proposes legislation, enforces EU law, and represents the EU internationally. Think of it like the U.S. Executive Branch + Federal Agencies, but with no legislative power by itself.
• European Parliament = directly elected chamber, akin to the U.S. House of Representatives, though elected by proportional representation. It co-legislates all EU laws.
• Council of the EU (aka Council of Ministers) = the Member States’ national governments, with rotating presidencies. Comparable to a hybrid of the U.S. Senate + state governors’ conference—co-legislator with Parliament.
• European Council = heads of state/government (e.g. Macron, Scholz), sets high-level political direction. Not a legislative body.
• Administrative vs Legislative: The Commission is administrative—it prepares, justifies, and implements. It doesn’t pass laws. Laws only pass via trilateral (three-party) negotiation between Commission, Council, and Parliament—called a trilogue.
• Separation of Powers vs Shared Powers: The U.S. model separates executive, legislative, and judicial functions strictly. The EU model features shared responsibilities and institutional checks. Think co-decision, not strict opposition.
• Trilogues = informal 3-way legislative negotiations to finalize texts: Commission (proposer), Parliament (amender), Council (national ministers). No equivalent in U.S. politics—closest analogy is bicameral reconciliation with executive guidance.