iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Two firms of 30 people. One independent, one owned by a large group. In EU digital law, the first gets 25 small-firm reliefs. The second keeps 3, loses 13, and 9 are unclear. Ownership matters as much as size. thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/who-is-sma...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Firm sizes follow the same power law across countries and decades. Authorities that try to redraw it fight a statistical law. Xavier Gabaix on what antitrust should learn: open.spotify.com/episode/4i5vnkQFdzBObKo1sx6wvf youtu.be/hksXBzu4AnU podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1736309658?i=1000791969279

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Draghi says European firms “stay small”, partly because of rules that kick in at a certain size. I mapped all 290 size-based rules in the EU’s 34 digital laws. 20 of those laws use a size term they never define. thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/who-is-sma...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Your city, your employer, your CEO’s pay and the next market crash obey one law. Xavier Gabaix spent his career working out why. Then I asked him about the cost of thinking. open.spotify.com/episode/4i5vnkQFdzBObKo1sx6wvf youtu.be/hksXBzu4AnU podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1736309658?i=1000791969279

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

“People of the same trade seldom meet together […] the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public.” Smith, 1776. This summer the frontier AI labs met, then asked Washington for an antitrust waiver. Would their pact survive EU law? My take: thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/the-ai-slo...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The question for AI is to what extend returns are increasing. A new paper by Tom Cunningham et al. puts a number on it. arxiv.org/abs/2609.15802 This has big implications for law. One does not regulate self-improved systems as others, see papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The three policies Bloom, Van Reenen and Williams rate highest for innovation: R&D tax credits, skilled immigration, trade and competition. The European Innovation Act is silent on the first two and works against the third. thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/european-i...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The fastest change we have ever recorded. Two editions ago, no competition agency reported an internal LLM assistant. This year, 19 of 30 run or build one. From nothing to the most common tool in the field in two years. Fifth report, free. shorturl.at/wmEaW #computationalantitrust

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Article 11 of the European Innovation Act would open R&D procurement only to firms of European origin. In 25 years of EU digital law, no instrument has ever excluded a firm for where it comes from. thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/european-i...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

OUT: The only report on the use of AI in antitrust written by the agencies themselves. 30 of them this year, in their own words: which models they run, what they let them do, what they refuse to do... Here is the fifth edition of the Stanford #ComputationalAntitrust report shorturl.at/wmEaW

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Tomorrow is going to be a very special day. Not so much for the champagne reception, but very much for what we have to unveil. Contributions from about 30 antitrust agencies showing up all the progress they’ve made when it comes to the use of AI and other computational tools.

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Booking/eTraveli is the first EU judgment where leveraging runs from a market a firm does not dominate into one it does. The Court called the direction irrelevant, in three paragraphs, no authority. Reverse leveraging is law: thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/booking-et...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

A merger can now be blocked for a share gain of a few tenths of a per cent. Not because competition falls, but because it stays where it is. Two paragraphs, no citation, no precedent in ECJ judgments. Booking v Commission, dissected: thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/booking-et...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Para 58 of the new Article 102 Guidelines states a rule no judgment states. The likelier the harm, the less evidence needed -> the burden shifts to the firm. The Court has presumptions for two practices. Para 58 cites one and states the rule for all. thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/commission...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

For two years I ran an experiment in my law classes: one group banned from ChatGPT, one left alone with it, one trained to use it. Structured training won year one. By year two, the edge had mostly gone. Now fully accessible in OA (Dutch Taverne amendment): papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Let me tell you something. I sent this empirical mapping of what needs to be fixed to have a proper digital single market to about 10 Members of the European Parliament, all of them involved in the Omnibus or the simplification process.

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Read the new Article 102 Guidelines and you will find the Court quoted correctly on every page. Read the judgments and you will find the next paragraph. That paragraph is where the Commission lost Intel, Qualcomm, AdSense and Android. thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/commission...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

My op-ed in Les Echos on the Commission’s draft merger guidelines: www.lesechos.fr/idees-debats.... The question I ask is not whether the new rules are good. It is why a text that changes so much is written as if it changed nothing.

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

NEW: I checked the Commission's Article 102 Guidelines against the judgments. Faithful on 1,093 citations of 1,096. Silent on the paragraphs that follow, where the Court says what the Commission must still prove, and where it has lost before. thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/commission...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I like when AI is making data that I’ve had for a very long time. I find it useful. I’ve ranked over 2,000 movies on IMDb. Giving all the data to Claude, I was able to spot new movies that are missing to my watch list. How exciting is that?

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

The fastest-spreading clause in EU digital law conscripts a foreigner’s representative. 1 act had it in 2016. 12 do now. Full audit here: thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/where-eu-d...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Of the EU digital acts adopted between 2000 and 2015, none reached a firm with no establishment in the Union. Not one. Of the 19 adopted since 2020, 15 do. Find the full audit here: thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/where-eu-d...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

NEW: The draft EU merger guidelines open by saying they are based on the case law of the Union Courts and the Commission’s decisional practice. Frédéric Jenny and I tested that sentence against all 8,450+ published merger decisions + all ECJ competition cases. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

2000 to 2015: the EU set no sanction prices in its digital rulebook and imposed none itself. 2020 to 2025: it sets 52% and imposes 27%. The sanctioning power is federalizing, generation by generation. No treaty change. No announcement. Just drafting. thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/paying-the...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

141 of the 255 penalty provisions in the EU digital rulebook leave the price of infringement to Member States. The obligations are federal. The consequences are not. One rulebook, 27 price lists. Call it a single market... thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/paying-the...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

NEW: The largest category of sanctions in the EU digital rulebook is not a fine. 1/3 of its 255 penalty provisions revoke capabilities, the authorization, the service, the managers. A fine has a ceiling. Losing the right to operate does not. thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/paying-the...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

A law adopted between 2000 and 2015 called for 7 outside texts on average to complete the legislation. Between 2016 and 2019, 11. Since 2020, 20. Each generation ships less assembled than the last. thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/the-eu-rul...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I went through 34 EU digital laws (AI Act, DMA, DSA, MiCA, GDPR…) and counted every time the text says the actual rule will be written later, in a separate text. It happens 517 times: thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/the-eu-rul...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

The eCommerce Directive of 2000 named 9 institutional categories. The GDPR lifted the ceiling to 27. The EHDS of 2025 names 61. Institutional complexity rises with every legislative generation. Convergence would show the opposite slope. thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/one-digita...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

440 provisions coordinate authority across the EU digital rulebook. Only 13% actually bind anyone. The one-stop-shop, the mechanism most associated with the single market promise, appears 11 times in 34 instruments... thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/one-digita...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

A firm under the GDPR faces many copies of one supervisor. A firm deploying one AI system can face 15 different types of supervisor whose competences meet inside a single product. The AI Act is the most crowded instrument of the EU digital rulebook. thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/one-digita...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

101 consummated mergers, and merger simulations overpredict price increases in about 70% of them, by 3.8% for the merging parties. YET, they still screen harmful mergers better than HHI thresholds or GUPPI. Wrong magnitudes, right ranking.

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

I classified all 1,068 institutional assignments in the EU digital rulebook. Information exchange: 359. Advisory: 262. Coordination: 233. Sanctioning: 95. The soft functions outnumber the hard ones 2.6 to 1. thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/one-digita...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Over 2,000 compute hours later, they find algorithmic collusion typically breaks. HOWEVER: pair a 32B model with a 14B one and the big model leads, the small one follows, and prices stay 21% above competitive. Capability gaps stabilise cartels rather than disrupt them.

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Andrew Perlman (Dean Suffolk Law) has built an archive comparing how 128 US law schools handle AI in coursework. Berkeley bans it by default. Chicago teaches 1L courses device-free while building supervised use into legal writing. Texas dropped take-home exams, etc...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

I analyzed the definitions provisions of all 34 EU digital instruments and recorded ~1,400 defined terms. The famous complaint that the rulebook is incoherent? Mostly wrong. This does not mean EU regulation is easy to navigate... My findings: thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/definition...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Force a platform to share its data with rivals on equal terms and you may end up with less data for everyone. Hanming Fang and Soo Jin Kim show that weak data neutrality is bypassed through pricing, and strong data neutrality cuts the platform's incentive to refine data in the first place. Equal acc

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

“A lot of macroeconomics really wastes computing power (...) solving for very complex equilibrium behavior of a sort that goes far beyond what you could ever imagine a real human being is doing...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

My July reading suggestions are out. Merger simulations tested at scale, AI agent collusion turning out to be more fragile than feared, backdoors in neural networks that no statistical test can catch, user innovation, and why the AI labs keep hiring philosophers. networklawreview.org/july-2026/

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Anti-steering under Article 102: Apple, €40m basic amount, nearly nine years of infringement. Anti-steering under the DMA: Google, €430m, a little over two years. Annualized, the DMA prices the same conduct at roughly 40x the Article 102 rate. Here is my analysis: open.substack.com/pub/thecompe...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

All competition agencies now enforce with computational tools. Regulation 1/2003 was drafted for investigators who read documents. I explain (here briefly) where that breaks + three funded PhD positions I am recruiting to work on it. legalblogs.wolterskluwer.com/competition-...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

In September 2024 the Court of Justice refused to make self-preferencing unlawful as a general rule. Article 6(5) DMA is that general rule. On Thursday the Commission enforced it against the same company whose litigation produced the refusal. Here is my analysis: open.substack.com/pub/thecompe...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

NEW 📻 Peter Howitt won the 2025 Nobel for growth through creative destruction. On #ScalingTheory, he explains why more competition does not always produce more innovation, and why it depends on how close a firm sits to the technological frontier. We also talk about the EC’s draft Merger Guidelines..

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

NEW: thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/what-the-a... September 2025: the Commission refuses to hold Microsoft’s own service to the standard it set for Microsoft’s rivals. July 2026: it imposes that exact rule on Google. As settled law. Both texts are in the piece, quoted and dated. This is reversa

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Looking at every European Commission merger decision, the most-cited decisions are not the famous ones. They are market definition anchors in energy, oil, telecoms and retail. Exxon/Mobil sits at the center. The cases we write about do not.

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

NEW substack. The Commission’s DMA decisions on Google (last week) dress up new law as old practice. I supply the citations it left out. Every antecedent, every contrary ruling, dated and quoted in full. Results? Five documented reversals. thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/what-the-a...

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

EU merger law tells companies they can defend a deal with efficiencies. I read all 57 cases where they tried. Accepted as decisive: zero. The defence has never once saved a merger the European Commission wanted to block. It is a promise the record does not keep. Paper coming.

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

This paper is an important reminder that “open weights” do not automatically create trust. If model trainers can, in principle, plant statistically undetectable backdoors, then relying on open-source frontier models developed by geopolitical rivals becomes a much harder governance question.

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Thibault Schrepel @profschrepel.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

The EU already has digital sovereignty. Just the wrong kind. Across 34 laws, five types written into the rules: ➝ infrastructure ➝ adequacy ➝ jurisdiction ➝ access rules ➝ credentials & coin All of it controls foreign tech. None builds any. Audit 👇 thecompetitionsystem.substack.com/p/the-paperw...

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