Study Paper No 01/23 and No 2/23
The Europa-Kolleg Hamburg is pleased to publish two more Study Papers. These are the very well rated theses of MEELS students Ibrahim Gündoğar and Meltem Gündoğar. Ms. Gündoğar was also awarded a prize by the Edmund Siemers Foundation for the best graduation of the graduate class of 2022. Her study paper examines abusive market practices of online platforms entitled “EU’s Approach to Abuse of Dominance Concerning Online Platforms: A New Era for EU Competition Policy?”. In his thesis, Ibrahim Gündoğar deals with the topic “Coherence of EU Common Agricultural Policy Reform with the EU Green Deal Objectives”.
Both graduates are currently working as EU experts in a coordination office for Turkey’s accession negotiations to the European Union. Ibrahim Gündoğar also holds a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the Faculty of Political Science at Ankara University. He received his master’s degree in European and European Legal Studies from Europa Kolleg Hamburg.
Meltem Gündoğar holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Middle East Technical University and earned a master’s degree in International Trade Management from Boğaziçi University. She is also a graduate of the Master’s program in European and European Legal Studies at the Europa-Kolleg Hamburg.
Here are the abstracts and links to the two study papers:
- Climate change and environmental degradation are among the most important challenges of today. However, even though there is an increasing awareness of this global threat, international community still has difficulties with taking concrete steps to tackle these crises. In this regard, the European Union (EU) plays the leading role in actions against these problems. In accordance with this role, the European Commission announced its ambitious European Green Deal with the objective of being the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. This thesis aims to examine whether the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform delivers the European Green Deal objectives, particularly in light of the “EU Farm to Fork Strategy” and “EU Biodiversity for 2030 Strategy”.
- In recent years, there has been a growing concern over whether existing anti-trust regulations and tools are sufficient to deal with legal cases involving online platforms. This study aims to reveal whether further market regulation is needed to ensure fair competition in online platforms. Due to the multi-sided nature and rapidly changing structure of online platforms, defining the relevant market and determining dominance has become problematic. Besides, through landmark decisions in EU jurisdiction, existing rules are stretched to the boundaries for effective enforcement. Nevertheless, these legal cases tamed the power of tech giants only to a limited extent. Thus, the EU introduced the Digital Markets Act that contains ex-ante rules to combat weak contestability and unfair practices in online platform markets.