The digital revolution, apart from its particular impact on the economy, also generated specific competition problems and influenced the shape of competition rules. In the article I take a look at these changes from the perspective of small business. I refer to current changes in the EU competition law and to new legal acts concerning digital markets that pursue, to some extent, similar objectives to competition law (DMA). On this basis, I present how the challenges of digital economy marked by platformisation and the growing disparity between the big hi-tech companies and the rest of market players strengthened the tendency to treat SMEs favorably. At the same time, I make references to specific examples in legal provisions and case law showing that the contemporary EU competition law's favorable attitude towards smaller market players is not really a drastic change of rules but an effect of evolution of tendencies with strong roots in the pre-digital past.

On June 6, 2024, the 5th edition of the Energy Forum of Science and Economy, a cyclical conference organized by the Mercatus et Civis Foundation, the Association of Consumer Advocates and the Institute of Legal Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, took place in the Mirror Hall of the Staszic Palace in Warsaw. The main theme of this year's edition of the Forum, under the media patronage of the "Business Law Journal", was the diversification of technologies and the security of energy recipients.

Competition law has established a distinction between agreements restricting competition 'by object' and 'by effect'. This division has a significant practical importance as in case of anticompetitive conduct consistent with these classified as a restriction 'by object' the competition authority's obligations to support its findings with the necessary evidence are much lowered — the competition authority does not need to prove the effects of the practice. However, there is still no uniform answer to the question of whether the presumption of harmfulness of by-object restrictions can be rebutted due to the context of a specific case. Polish jurisprudence does not provide an unambiguous answer, drifting between a formal and a more economic approach. More explicit conclusions in favor of an economic approach can be drawn from EU law. The aim of the article is to present and compare models of antitrust assessment of restrictions "by object" developed in Polish and EU jurisprudence, and to propose, on this basis, a solution, that should be adopted in Polish jurisprudence. The author argues in favor of the antitrust authority examining the broader economic context also in case of conducts that fall into the categories usually assessed as restrictions "by object", provided that an appropriate evidence and arguments exist that may refute the presumption of restriction of competition.