Is it not said that to improve, you have to be able to evolve? Just as in sport where the desire to progress is a constant driving force, in economics the search for levers for growth and competitiveness is also a constant objective. The Autorité plays an active part in this dynamic, making recommendations to public authorities with a view to fostering greater competition.

To comply with the rules, you also have to know what they say in order to integrate them upstream. Here again, the Autorité works to offer economic operators ever greater predictability through its sector-specific inquiries. A look back at a year of expertise.

What are the reasons for the growth in its advisory role?

First and foremost, there has been growing demand from administrations, the Minister of the Economy and Members of Parliament for analyses of the competitive impact of proposed reforms and expert appraisals of current regulations. Examples include the opinions issued to the French government on the draft Law to Secure and Regulate the Digital Space (SREN), and the property brokerage and meal voucher sectors, where the Autorité recommended reforms to the government, sometimes going so far as to offer turnkey solutions.

The Autorité also actively uses its power to take action ex officio to issue opinions and launch sector-specific inquiries.

It seeks to identify any bottlenecks in the French economy, as well as areas of growth that could give rise to reforms beneficial to the French people. The legislator has been receptive, and many of the opinions issued by the Autorité have led to far-reaching reforms.

Over the past 15 years, the Autorité has chosen its battles, focusing on sectors where increased competition will have a direct impact on consumers. As a result, it has influenced concrete debates that will shape the future of the French people, seeking to effect significant change in a number of sectors, such as mass retail distribution, automotive spare parts, over-the-counter medicine distribution, coach travel, motorway tolls, rail and bus stations, hearing aids and more.

The Autorité also uses its power of initiative to analyse and decipher fast-changing sectors or explore complex, cross-functional transformation phenomena linked to the digitalisation of the economy. Its objective is to gain a good understanding of how specific sectors, technologies and behaviours function. In a forward-looking approach, the Autorité thus develops in-depth expertise of crucial issues, which consolidates its decision-making and prepares its teams to address the issues rapidly and effectively.

For example, the Autorité analysed the online search and display (tiles, banners and skins integrated into website content to be seen by Internet users) advertising sectors in 2010 and 2018 respectively, FinTechs in 2021 and the cloud in 2023. In early 2024, it also conducted a sector specific inquiry into the generative artificial intelligence sector.

All these emerging sectors are sources of productivity gains for companies and value creation for the economy.

Some of the opinions issued by the Autorité can provide economic stakeholders with a framework for analysing their behaviour. The signals sent by the opinions can therefore encourage voluntary compliance by economic operators. In its opinion on the cloud sector in 2023, for example, the Autorité described various practices that could restrict competition. It also identified market failures that could be addressed by regulation (the European Data Act and the French Law to Secure and Regulate the Digital Space [SREN]) and stressed that competition authorities would be extremely careful to ensure that established players did not hinder the development of smaller or new players based on these technologies.

Opinion 23-A-08 of 29 June 2023

Taking into account any concerns expressed by players in the context of sector-specific inquiries, the General Rapporteur may, in certain cases, decide upstream to conduct a preliminary examination of the evidence gathered, to assess whether there are grounds for opening one or more antitrust investigations.