Policy Dialogue with Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager:"Taking Competition Policy into the Future"

Taking Competition Policy into the Future was Executive Vice-President Vestager's youth policy dialogue as part of the European Year of Youth. This event, organized by DG Competition, provided a platform for the experts and scholars of tomorrow to debate what competition policy will look like in ten years’ time. It was also an opportunity for today’s experts to listen and respond to their vision, views and concerns.

This half-day conference took place online and in the Berlaymont building in Brussels in the afternoon of 3 February 2022. Executive Vice-President Vestager gave introductory remarks and DG Competition’s Director-General Guersent closed the event. Check out the full programme here.

Furthermore, the conference was open to the over 100 young people who entered in the Student Challenges that DG Competition organised in 2019 and 2021. The eight winners of the two challenges chose the conference’s format and topics; selected the speakers and steered the conference.

You can rewatch the conference on this stream.

Take aways from the Dialogue

1. "Taking Competition Policy into the Future" conference on 3 February 2022 – was summarised by EVP Vestager in her opening remarks. In its youth focus, she said, the Commission “wants more than just dialogue with you. We want dialogue by you”. The conference gave a platform to young competition experts who discussed what competition policy would look like ten years from then. It was also an opportunity for today’s practitioners and experts to listen and respond to their vision, views and concerns. DG Competition had already held two Student Challenges in 2019 and 2021 in connection with two previous conferences. The eight winners of the Student Challenges composed the independent Scientific Committee. They chose the conference’s format and topics; drafted the call for papers; selected the speakers and steered the debate on 3 February. The call for papers was sent to the over 100 young people who had entered the Student Challenges.
2. Because the policy dialogue was a genuine expert debate on the future of competition policy in the EU and around the world, other takeaways were of a more technical nature. Speakers had no doubt that competition authorities should expand their powers in the future. However, how far should competition policy go as a tool to combat matters that are important to society was left as a question on the table. 
3. The ‘matters important to society’ identified by speakers and discussants included preparing for future crises so that competition authorities can support the world's economies in times of need and reviewing the rules so that they do not create risks or hurdles that stifle genuine efforts by firms to innovate or operate more sustainably.
4. The Scientific Committee chose to focus part of the discussion on AI and related matters. Here, the final takeaways were the twin need for competition authorities to i) concern themselves with data power rather than market power and ii) embrace computational techniques such as big data, AI, machine learning and deep learning in order to analyse the market more efficiently and effectively, and detect breaches.