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AbstractCompetition policy in the EU and UK is in the process of a significant reconfiguration. Its key postulates, methodologies, and normative goals are being subject to intense discussion and revision. The emergence of sui generis‘new competition tools’ in the area of digital markets—EU Digital Markets Act and UK Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (bill)—epitomises this trend. The purpose of this Article is to attempt to provide legal theoretical foundations for the new subfield of competition law and policy by systematising and conceptualising these trends into the framework of socio-legal scholarship.

EU digital competition policy is in the process of a paradigmatic transformation. The main legal instrument, epitomising the rationale of the reform is the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA). This article conceptualises the broader theoretical foundations of EU digital competition policy and law, illustrating the developed hypotheses by examining the selected procedural novelties of the DMA. The main normative proposition, underpinning this article is that the emerging more proactive approach to digital markets reflects an objective socio-economic and political trend. This implies that the purified, inwards-oriented perception of competition policy will be gradually converting towards a more polycentric modality. An earlier version of this article has been awarded the prize by the Portuguese Competition Authority 2021 “Competition Policy Award for academic work in Competition Policy”.