Fabian Wiedemann

Digital intermediaries have fundamentally changed people’s opportunities for development in recent years. Taking into account the competitive characteristics of digital platform markets and the ubiquity of digital intermediaries in the lives of many people, the question arises whether these intermediaries, in the absence of effective competition, can also harm society due to their particularly formative influence on private opportunities for development. The dissertation project therefore examines in particular the extent to which competition law still has a connection to the protection of democracy and social freedom and whether such a connection can and must be operationalized in the context of merger control.