Digital transformation and competition policy: analysing EU's regulatory response to emerging technologies

This research explores the effectiveness of the European Union's (EU) competition policies and regulatory framework in the era of swift technology development, focusing on the nexus between digitalization, competition, and competitiveness. A novel content analysis was completed using QDA Miner for 30 official EU legislative documents issued between 1985 and 2024. The text was coded based on 10 major and 25 secondary themes. Key findings demonstrate that the most frequently used terms refer to market structure, business practices, and innovation, while the most frequent codes belong to the regulatory framework, competition policy, enforcement, and industrial strategy categories. The co-occurrence, link and proximity analyses show that digital transformation became one of the main concerns of EU in terms of regulations after 2010 and, after the pandemic, it was accompanied by a sustained interest towards sustainable development after the pandemic, which align well with the twin transition - digital and environmental - in the EU.