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Competition authorities are increasingly concerned that their tools are not fit to deal with markets with digital multi-sided platforms (MSPs). These markets have a tendency to ‘tip’in the sense that one MSP takes it all or dominates the market by far. The need for a new competition tool has been expressed by the European Commission’s Executive Vice-President, Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy:

‘Our rules have an inbuilt flexibility which allows us to deal with a broad range of anti-competitive conduct across markets. We see, however, that there are certain structural risks for competition, such as tipping markets, which are not addressed by the current rules’(European Commission Press Release, 2 June 2020). 1