Cooperation between competition authorities in digital markets: a continuing trend

How to tackle the competition law issues relating to digital players and markets remains a key priority area for regulators around the world and an area about which they are now more regularly coordinating. Here, we consider how recent updates on cross-border cooperation and perspectives should affect how businesses approach these issues.

Cooperation agreement: EU and Japan

In July 2025, the EU and Japan held their 30th EU-Japan Summit. The joint statement following the Summit committed that the EU and Japan "will cooperate to promote fair and contestable digital markets by holding regular exchanges regarding the EU's Digital Markets Act and Japan's Act on Promotion of Competition for Specified Smartphone Software," which regulate many of the same businesses and issues such as interoperability, self-preferencing and user choice in app stores. This commitment coincides with the first anniversary of the application of the EU Digital Market Act ("DMA") and the European Commission's ("Commission") consultation offering stakeholders the chance to offer feedback one year on. For businesses operating in Europe and Japan, this cooperation offers both opportunities and challenges: possible alignment in the regimes, easing global compliance efforts, but a clear signal by the Japan Fair Trade Commission ("JFTC") and the Commission to tackle what they perceive as anticompetitive behaviour in digital markets.

Key to cooperation between Japan and the EU is the newly signed Cooperation Arrangement among the Commission's Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, the Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition, and the JFTC (the "Cooperation Arrangement"). Even though this does not create any new legal obligations or financial commitments, the agreement is ambitious and specific in its scope: to facilitate collaboration and information exchange regarding the application of EU and Japanese digital market regulations. These are the key points:

• The Cooperation Arrangement identifies specific areas for collaboration, including:
  • The application of each jurisdiction's regulations to digital platforms, sharing best practices and lessons learned;
  • Methods for collecting and interpreting market intelligence, such as technical auditing and stakeholder feedback; and
  • Investigatory tools and due process frameworks, including access to data, rights of defence, and transparency obligations.
• The Cooperation Agreement outlines modes of collaboration, such as scheduled and ad-hoc meetings, technical expert dialogues, joint training courses, sharing of best practices, and potentially joint studies, staff secondments and coordinated research projects.
• The Cooperation Agreement does not extend to cooperation on the exchange of confidential information, particularly business secrets or information from ongoing investigations, unless express consent is given by the relevant parties.

The Commission has already made headlines enforcing the DMA, having issued significant fines with the promise of more to come, so all should expect that there is a lot of learning to be shared.

Cooperation beyond the agreement: US and UK

Although the Cooperation Agreement does not include the US and UK, they will remain important players in competition regulation of and enforcement in digital markets.

Since January, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority ("CMA")has started enforcing the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act ("DMCCA"), its equivalent of the DMA. Although it is still early days for this regime, when assessing what conduct requirements are appropriate for firms with strategic market status, "the CMA may take into account actions and experiences of other regulators or legislators internationally." The CMA has flagged that the DMCCA is somewhat more flexible than the approach of the DMA, which seems analogous with the JFTC's recent public comments that it is likely to apply its new digital regime more flexibly than the DMA.

Though the US has expressed interest in competition law enforcement of technology firms and platforms across digital markets, policymakers have criticized the DMA. Many of the world's largest digital platforms are headquartered in the US, and some them have been designated as "gatekeepers" and "core platform service providers" under the DMA. They are also expected to be classified as providers of “specified smartphone software” under Japan's new law, so the US is likely to remain an active participant in discussions about competition and digital markets, even if not engaging in formal cooperation with other jurisdictions.

Key takeaways

Over the next few months it will be interesting to see how the Cooperation Agreement is implemented by the Commission and JFTC, and whether the new leaders of both authorities endorse it in practice. It will be especially important to assess whether it establishes a precedent for further and deeper cross-border regulatory cooperation in the digital sector and how the UK, the US and other jurisdictions engage.

Because of these rapid new developments, it is more timely than ever to seek legal guidance if your company has questions regarding enforcement of competition rules in the digital space, or receives outreach from any enforcement agency. Mayer Brown is prepared to advise and counsel companies on the implications of these developments in their current and future business activities in the digital space. Please do not hesitate to reach out to any of the authors for further information about this topic and additional developments.