Aleksandra Boutin will speak at The 2019 Transatlantic Summit on Competition in the Digital Age – Facing the Digital Challenge Together.

Two leading global think tanks – the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington DC and the Lisbon Council in Brussels – are joining forces to convene The 2019 Transatlantic Summit: Competition in the Digital Age, a deep dive into the cross-border dimension of competition policy in an era where everything local is global and everything global is local. Enlivened by expert presentations, industry interventions and high-level debates, participants will explore the challenges and opportunities of better transatlantic cooperation in the age of the Internet, aiming at forging closer views on emerging common issues and exploring the economic benefits of regulatory convergence between the world’s leading democracies in an era where e-commerce knows few borders. The conclusions will feed directly into the European Commission’s conference on “Shaping Competition Policy in the Era of Digitisation conference”, which convenes the following day.

Aleksandra will participate in a panel on The Role of Platforms: Towards Transatlantic Consensus, together with Fabien Curto Millet, Director of Economics, Google, and Kai-Uwe Kühn, professor of economics and deputy director of the center for competition policy, University of East Anglia; former chief economist, directorate general for competition, European Commission. Competition policy has one thing in common on both sides of the Atlantic. It is premised on ensuring consumers are not harmed by undue market power or concentration. Is this still the case? Some say European efforts have gone too far – turning a policy intended to protect European consumers into one that primarily strengthens weak domestic players. Others argue that platforms play a vital role at the heart of the modern European economy, creating markets and common sets of rules across borders so creators, sellers and buyers can meet. How can we reach a consensus given the immense stake that the world’s democracies have in a healthy, Internet-driven economy?

You can download the full program.