On January 14, 2021, the German Bundestag passed the tenth amendment to the Act Against Restraints of Competition (ARC). While the amendment was initiated to address changes required by the ECN+ Directive (implementation deadline February 4, 2021), its main focus quickly shifted to the digital economy, earning it the moniker “ARC Digitization Act”.

The main changes are:

• Of the many provisions that specifically target digital industries, the most groundbreaking is the introduction of a new category of supervision, which is aimed in particular at large digital corporations. Germany is the first country to explicitly adopt such regulatory powers for its competition authority vis-à-vis digital industries.
• In addition, the relevance of data and digitalization in the modern economy is a clear focus of the amendment. Hence, amended provisions on an abuse of market power underline this relevance. In addition, the amendment introduces a provision that effectively forces companies to grant others access to data under specific circumstances.
• However, the amendment also contains various further changes, out of which the most important one is surely the significant increase in the merger control thresholds which was only included at a late stage of deliberations.
• Finally, the amendment includes a provision ensuring that (effective) compliance measures will be taken into account when calculating fines for violations of competition rules.

The amendment has now also passed the Bundesrat and will most likely come into force on January 19 or 20, including the new thresholds.

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