Conference programme

Heads of leading agencies will together discuss recent developments, what they are prioritising today and what they expect the focus of competition law to be going forward. They will also talk about how they coordinate their work and what international cooperation among the world’s antitrust agencies will look like in the coming years.

Leading antitrust practitioners will discuss the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities in antitrust damages litigation worldwide, including the impact of recent legislative and judicial developments, the role of collective actions and class proceedings, and the increasing influence of litigation funding in enabling claims. The session will conclude with a forward-looking discussion on the future of antitrust damages litigation and the implications for businesses, funders, and legal practitioners worldwide.

As digital platforms increasingly function as essential gateways to online markets and consumers, ensuring fair access and effective interoperability has become a central concern for competition enforcement and regulation. This panel will explore the evolving legal and economic dimensions of access terms – —particularly how dominant platforms set conditions for business users, third-party developers, and competitors. Key topics include the tension between privacy and data portability, self-preferencing and discriminatory access, the role of application programming interfaces (APIs) and technical standards in enabling (or impeding) interoperability, and how the Digital Markets Act (DMA) reshapes obligations for gatekeepers in this context. With recent enforcement actions and legislative developments across the EU and globally, the discussion will assess how regulators and courts are balancing innovation incentives with the need to prevent digital foreclosure and preserve open digital ecosystems.

In the digital age, concerns around traditional pricing cartels are being reshaped by the rise of algorithmic pricing and automated information exchange. This session will explore the latest developments in enforcement, provide practical guidance for companies and consider the fine line between the legitimate use of data and anti-competitive behaviour.

With an increasing focus on national and regional competitiveness and industrial policy agendas aimed at removing regulatory barriers to economic growth and innovation, are the rules of the game changing for merger control? The panel will discuss the impact of Europe’s Draghi report, the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) ‘political reset’ , the new US administration and other international developments and how these are playing out in merger enforcement.