EBU Legal Counsel Dr Konstantina Bania has been awarded for the Best Junior Paper at the 12th Ascola Conference, which took place in Stockholm on 15-17 June 2017.

The Conference's heading was "Competition Law for the Digital Economy" and highlighted a changing balance, where competition experts have gone from supporting digital companies inopening up markets to challenging these same companies for their dominance.

Dr Bania's presentation provided a comprehensive case-law review that illustrated the relevance of consumer data to competition enforcement and explored how to address certain challenges to competition enforcement that may arise in cases involving firms with access to large reserves of customer information.

Her accompanying paper, 'The Role of Consumer Data in the Enforcement of EU Competition Law', argues that markets reliant on the collection and processing of consumer data have not received sufficient consideration for the enforcement of competition laws. Antitrust agencies' choice to ignore the economics of data-driven markets may be an attempt to avoid tackling controversial practices whose effects are difficult to measure. And while competition watchdogs may not protect consumers from data protection violations, their hands off approach ultimately undermines the effectiveness of antitrust and merger control.