When the SCiDA 2026 conference ("Shaping Competition in the Digital Age — Towards Best Practices") convened at Düsseldorf's Haus der Universität on May 26–27, it staged a comparison Europe has needed for years: Germany's Section 19a of the Competition Act (GWB), the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), and the UK's Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA), examined side by side by the academics of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and the University of Exeter — with Bundeskartellamt President Andreas Mundt among the confirmed speakers. Five years into the German experiment, the evidence increasingly favours the approach Mundt's authority pioneered: designate first, then prohibit only specific, proven conduct.
The German record: five designations, mostly commitments, one prohibition
Section 19a, added to the GWB in January 2021, works in two steps. The Bundeskartellamt first designates a company as having "paramount significance for competition across markets" — it has done so five times: Alphabet/Google (January 2022), Meta (May 2022), Amazon (July 2022), Apple (April 2023) and Microsoft (September 2024). Only then can it prohibit specific practices from a statutory menu.
What is striking is how rarely the prohibition hammer has fallen. Most concluded proceedings ended in negotiated improvements rather than fines: Google changed its data-processing terms and opened up Google Maps Platform and News Showcase; Meta dropped the requirement that Quest VR headsets be tied to a Facebook account. The first genuine prohibition came only on February 5, 2026, when the authority barred Amazon from using "price control mechanisms" that suppressed or de-ranked third-party Marketplace listings it deemed overpriced, and ordered an initial €59 million disgorgement — the first use of that instrument since its 2023 reform. Third-party sellers account for roughly 60% of Amazon's marketplace sales, and Amazon — which counters that it would be "the only retailer in Germany forced to highlight non-competitive prices" — has said it will appeal.
Crucially, judicial review has been fast. Appeals under Section 19a go directly to the Federal Court of Justice (BGH), which upheld Amazon's designation in April 2024. Compare that with traditional Article 102 litigation, where cases routinely outlive the markets they concern.
The steelman for the DMA's rulebook approach
The case for the EU's per-se obligations is serious and should not be caricatured. Case-by-case enforcement is slow, information-asymmetric and resource-hungry; by the time an abuse is proven, the market may have tipped irreversibly. The DMA's ex-ante list of dos and don'ts gives gatekeepers legal certainty about what is forbidden, spares enforcers from re-litigating dominance in every case, and produced enforcement at a pace Article 102 never matched: the Commission's first non-compliance decisions landed on April 23, 2025 — €500 million against Apple for anti-steering violations and €200 million against Meta over its "consent or pay" model.
But speed of sanction is not the same as quality of outcome. The DMA's uniform obligations apply identically to business models as different as an app store and a social network, and its compliance debates have become a transatlantic political flashpoint rather than a technocratic exercise. A rule written in 2022 cannot anticipate how AI assistants, agentic commerce or new device categories will reshape gateway power — something the Düsseldorf conference put on its agenda precisely because the statute cannot.
Why the adjudicative middle path is winning
Section 19a occupies the space between classic abuse control and the DMA's code: faster than Article 102 (no dominance finding needed once designated), but still requiring the authority to prove specific conduct and effects before prohibiting it. That structure has three pro-innovation virtues. First, it is conduct-specific — Amazon was not banned from running a marketplace, only from overriding its sellers' pricing freedom outside narrow exceptions. Second, it is commitments-friendly, letting firms fix problems without years of litigation or headline fines. Third, it is error-correcting: a designated firm gets its day before the BGH within a couple of years, not a decade.
The UK has, in effect, already voted with the Germans. The CMA's DMCCA regime designated Apple's and Google's mobile platforms with strategic market status on October 22, 2025 — explicitly "not a finding of wrongdoing" — and has since leaned on tailored conduct requirements and negotiated commitments rather than a fixed statutory list. That is the German playbook with British procedure.
The honest caveats
Germany's model is no panacea. One prohibition decision in five years is a thin harvest if you believe digital markets tip quickly; the Apple App Tracking Transparency proceeding, in which the authority set out formal concerns in February 2025, remains unresolved. Designations lapse after five years and must be renewed, consuming agency resources. And a 19a-style regime depends on an unusually capable, well-led authority — it travels less easily than a statute.
Still, as SCiDA's organisers search for "best practices," the direction of convergence is visible. The DMA's next review should import flexibility from Düsseldorf: more scope for tailored remedies and commitments, less mechanical application of one-size-fits-all mandates. Regulating the handful of firms that structure the digital economy is legitimate; doing it through targeted, evidence-tested, judicially supervised interventions is how you discipline market power without taxing the innovation Europe says it wants more of. Five years of Section 19a practice is the closest thing Europe has to proof that this balance is achievable.