Executive summary

Margrethe Vestager has profoundly shaped competition in digital markets. From 2014 to 2024, Competition Commissioner Vestager applied competition laws with determination, targeting the business practices of dominant online platforms like Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. Alongside these enforcement efforts, Vestager redefined the competition framework by updating core policy tools and introducing significant digital regulations, such as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), to promote competitive and fair digital markets.

Vestager’s influence extends to the broader development of competition policy. She championed fair competition, raising public awareness of its benefits through initiatives like “making markets work for people.” Simultaneously, she resisted calls to relax competition rules—especially in merger control—for the sake of competitiveness, arguing instead that strong European competition is essential to achieving global industrial leadership.

Vestager’s legacy provides a solid foundation for the next Competition Commissioner. The incoming Commissioner will face challenges similar to those Vestager encountered, including navigating overlapping regulations like the DMA and Germany’s DMA-like competition law, keeping up with fast-evolving technologies like Generative AI, and addressing calls from some politicians for a “Europe-first” competitiveness approach.

The next Competition Commissioner must build on Vestager’s legacy to advance both competition and competitiveness. To achieve this, the Commissioner should improve coordination in enforcing digital regulations to ensure policy coherence (Recommendation 1), deepen expertise in digital and AI markets to keep pace with rapid technological change (Recommendation 2) and implement a pro-competitive growth strategy to strengthen European competitiveness (Recommendation 3).