The Challenge of the Virtual World for Independent Authorities

This article seeks to examine three important questions: What challenges does the virtual world pose for competition law? In what way does the digital economy change the relationship between economic rights and fundamental freedoms? How does the digital economy affect the division of jurisdiction between independent authorities? Two responses to these questions are suggested. The first and more radical is to introduce new laws to redesign competition law, jurisdictions, and intertwining rights. The second is a more sophisticated solution, namely, to interpret existing laws in the light of technological changes, coherent with an evolutionary interpretation of national and European Constitutional frameworks. In either case, it must be assumed as a political necessity that Europe’s primary purpose is to guide the digital revolution in the direction of equality for citizens in the exercise of economic rights and fundamental freedoms.