Participation of the Autorité de la concurrence in the work of the G7 led by the Japanese presidency on digital competition

The Autorité de la concurrence participates in the work of the G7 on digital competition, chaired this year by Japan. The creation of this working group is the result of an initiative by the French presidency of the G7 in 2019 to bring together the G7 competition authorities around the issues raised by the application of competition law in the digital economy.

The President of the Autorité de la concurrence, Benoît Coeuré, participated in the working group meeting organized by the Japanese presidency in Tokyo on 8 and 9 November.

During the meeting, the G7 competition authorities and policymakers adopted the joint annual update of the "Compendium of Approaches to Improving Competition in Digital Markets" and for the first time a “Digital Competition Communiqué” which sets out the initiatives to promote and protect competition in digital markets and commitment to address competition concerns arising from emerging technologies.

Identified priorities and challenges

The 2023 edition of the G7 summit on digital competition was chaired by the Japan Fair Trade Commission and gathered competition authorities and policymakers from the G7 countries (United-States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Italy, Japan, France) as well as the European Commission.

During this summit, participants discussed among other topics:

• Enforcers’ priorities, challenges and approaches in digital markets;
• Recent updates on policy initiatives and frameworks in the digital competition field;
• issues and challenges arising from emerging technologies and the necessity to anticipate market evolution to prevent potential future competition issues
• The importance of national cooperation with policymakers and international cooperation with competition authorities to foster coherent and efficient approaches to global issues arising from digitalization

G7 work

This summit was an opportunity for the G7 competition authorities and policymakers to issue a "Digital Competition Communique". This communiqué sets out initiatives to promote and protect competition in digital markets, in a context of emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence. For the first time, G7 authorities have adopted a common position on the competitive risks associated with generative artificial intelligence and have agreed to continue their cooperation on this issue.

The participants also updated the "Compendium of Approaches to improving competition in digital markets". This document, begun in 2021 under the presidency of the United Kingdom, summarises the work of the G7  competition authorities (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States), the European Commission's Directorate-General for Competition and the competition authorities of four invited countries (Australia, South Africa, South Korea and India) in the digital economy.

Finally, G7 policymakers updated the " G7 Inventory of New Rules for Digital Markets " drawn-up with the assistance of the OECD. This inventory maps out the legal approaches to digital competition in the G7 jurisdictions.