National Development Antitrust Enforcement against Tech Companies in Italy: Novel Developments and Implications

Abstract

Tech companies have lately become the target of vigorous antitrust enforcement in Italy. In the course of 2021 alone, the Italian Competition Authority (‘ICA’) conducted four antitrust investigations, three of which ended up with findings of anticompetitive behaviour and heavy fines (i.e. Google/Enel, Amazon/Apple, Amazon Logistics)1, and one with a referral to the European Commission (‘EC’) (i.e. Google Advertising). In this article, we briefly review these decisions and the underlying theories of harm as well as discuss the wider implications. We argue that these decisions may have far-reaching implications going beyond the local regulatory risk, for they further stretch the fashionable theories of harm the Commission has been lately enforcing against tech companies and lower the threshold for intervention in the IT space; they are inspiring other national competition agencies (‘NCA’) across the European Union (‘EU’), and, last but not least, they contribute to a worrisome, ever increasing fragmentation trend in the enforcement of competition rules against tech companies.