Major UK competition law changes will start to apply shortly

Giles Warrington, competition law expert at Pinsent Masons, was commenting ahead of 1 January 2025 when important provisions of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCC Act) will enter into force – pursuant to The Digital Markets, Competition and Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (Commencement No.1 and Savings and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2024.

“Businesses should have already started reviewing their competition compliance policies and training to capture DMCC Act changes, including new areas such as the duty to preserve evidence,” said Warrington.

The commencement regulations concern various provisions of the DMCC Act that amend, expand and strengthen a wide range of pre-existing UK competition legislation covering areas such as antitrust investigations and enforcement, merger control, and the market inquiries regime. This includes provisions to enhance cooperation with overseas authorities, a duty of expedition for the CMA and sectoral regulators, and new competition rules for the motor fuel sector.  Administrative fines for non-compliance with the rules have also been increased across the board.

The commencement regulations also confirm that the new digital markets competition regime, introduced by the DMCC Act, will likewise begin to apply from 1 January 2025. This regime will only bind certain large digital firms designated by the CMA as having “strategic market status”.

Warrington said: “Some DMCC Act changes also introduce flexibility, for example in areas such as merger control, which can help align CMA merger review processes with businesses’ merger and acquisition deal timings, especially in multi-jurisdictional transactions. Changes to the market studies and investigations regime can also help the CMA trial proposed remedies to ensure they are effective and proportionate before their implementation.”

The commencement regulations do not, however, apply to the various DMCC Act changes to UK consumer protection law, including amendments that empower the CMA to directly enforce and punish consumer law infringements in the same way as it enforces competition law. Those changes are expected to come into force, in stages, from April 2025 onwards, pursuant to further regulations.

Alan Davis, competition law expert at Pinsent Masons, said: “New digital markets competition rules that apply to the conduct and merger and acquisition activity of certain large tech firms will have important implications for the sector. Affected firms will have to navigate the UK’s regime alongside the EU’s Digital Markets Act which is being robustly enforced by the European Commission.”

Tadeusz Gielas, competition law expert at Pinsent Masons, said: “In addition to the commencement regulations other DMCC Act regulations, on which the UK government has previously consulted, have now been finalised - concerning antitrust, merger and markets, and the new digital markets competition regime - and set out how turnover should be estimated or calculated and the circumstances in which a person is considered to have control over an enterprise, for the purposes of the DMCC Act. Certain rules of the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), the UK’s specialist competition law court, have also been amended to reflect DMCC Act changes.”

“In anticipation of the DMCC Act entering into force, the CMA has widely consulted on numerous items of draft new and revised guidance it has been developing since the DMCC Act was enacted in May 2024. Given the range of important changes that will come into force on 1 January 2025, it is hoped that the CMA will be able to imminently publish the final versions of its new guidance so that businesses can better understand how the authority will apply and enforce the new rules in practice”, said Gielas.