The commentary “Artificial Intelligence in Business and Economic Decisions under the Shadow of the EU Regulations” explores how the spread of algorithmic decision-making is colliding with an older competition law toolbox. It focuses on the way Artificial Intelligence systems, particularly pricing and recommendation algorithms, can influence market outcomes even when companies never explicitly coordinate their behavior. As firms automate more of their commercial decisions, regulators must confront a landscape where anti-competitive patterns can emerge from code and data rather than human agreements.
The author highlights that there is a prevailing skepticism regarding whether existing competition laws are equipped to curb the tendency of AI to foster prices above competitive levels, as these laws were originally crafted to target explicit collusion between companies. Because classic doctrines rely on finding evidence of communication or agreements, algorithmic pricing that leads to parallel price increases may fall into a grey zone where harmful outcomes are visible but legal responsibility is hard to pin down. The article argues that this mismatch between legal concepts and technical reality is becoming more pressing as European Union institutions simultaneously push forward ambitious digital regulation and enforcement agendas.
Against this backdrop, the piece situates Artificial Intelligence within the broader “shadow” of forthcoming and existing European Union rules, including competition policy, data governance and sectoral digital norms. It suggests that European regulators will have to refine their analytical tools to distinguish benign efficiency gains from algorithmically induced tacit collusion, and to do so without stifling innovation. The commentary implicitly calls for more granular guidance and possibly targeted updates to enforcement practice, so that authorities can act when Artificial Intelligence is effectively sustaining prices above competitive levels while still operating within the legal and economic principles that underpin European Union competition law.
