Small business in the digital platform era – competition law landscape

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.

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