Faced with Google’s abuse of a dominant position, from which whole sections of the European digital economy suffer, the problem of urgency and of shortening the timeframes of ongoing procedures is essential. Time is the ally of monopolies and the enemy of European companies that suffer from the abuse of a dominant position by the American giants.

In order to be able to protect European companies, it is imperative that the use of interim measures be made operational, in order to be able to stop abuses of a dominant position quickly and more effectively.

The OIP is therefore fighting for the provisional measures to be reformed.

Article 8 of Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2003 on the implementation of the competition rules provided for in Articles 81 and 82 of the Treaty

provides that the European Commission may order interim measures aimed at interrupting a practice constituting an abuse of a dominant position, if “serious and irreparable damage is likely to be caused to competition” (Article 8 of Regulation (EC) No. 1/2003).

With this requirement of “irreparable” damage, the standards for implementing interim measures appear too high, so that this measure, although necessary, is inapplicable.

In order not to leave European companies, in particular in the very fast-paced digital world, subjected to market foreclosure practices, with no other solution than to wait for years for the litigation procedures to come to an end, it would be a question of reforming the provisional measures provided for in article 8 of regulation (EC) No 1/2003 of the Council in order to make them applicable as quickly as possible by the European Commission, but also of amending article 22 of the DMA settlement by replacing the condition “irreparable” with “immediate”.