The proposed Digital Networks Act (“DNA) risks doing something politically significant and legally consequential: downgrading competition from a core regulatory objective to a more derivative, instrumental concept. In the Commission text, competition is no longer stated as a self-standing objective in the way it was under the European Electronic Communications Code (see art. 3,2,b):

“promote competition in the provision of electronic communications networks and associated facilities, including efficient infrastructure-based competition, and in the provision of electronic communications services and associated services”

Instead, in the DNA competition appears (art. 3, 1 e) mainly as a means to deliver other outcomes:

“ensure the provision of high-quality, affordable and publicly available electronic communications services to all end-users through effective competition in electronic communications networks and associated facilities, including efficient infrastructure-based competition, and in electronic communications services and associated services throughout the Union“

while “competitiveness” is elevated and given far more political weight. (art. 3,1a).

That is not a drafting accident. It reflects a broader shift in European policy language that has been visible for some time in the pre-DNA debate: the suggestion that Europe’s telecom problem is, at least in part, “too much competition”, and that the answer lies in scale, consolidation and regulatory restraint. The danger of this narrative is not only analytical weakness; it is that it blurs the distinction between being pro-investment and being indifferent to market power.

A real change of paradigm

Under the current Code, the promotion of competition is framed as a primary objective of the regulatory system. By contrast, the DNA proposal lists general objectives in a new configuration where “competitiveness of the connectivity sector” comes first, while “effective competition” is folded into a later provision on ensuring high-quality and affordable services.

This reordering matters because objectives are not decorative. They guide interpretation, enforcement priorities, and the calibration of ex ante obligations. If competition ceases to be a stand-alone benchmark, there is a real risk that regulatory choices will increasingly be filtered through a softer industrial-policy lens in which concentration can be redescribed as efficiency and reduced rivalry as a necessary precondition for investment.

That concern is not abstract. As some experts from national capitals already argueed in different formulations, that competition should remain a self-standing or primary objective, and that effective competition is in fact a prerequisite for competitiveness, innovation, investment and end-user welfare.

What this may reflect

The downgrade seems consistent with the pre-DNA policy mood that emerged in high-level debates on the future of telecoms and digital infrastructure. The Commission’s explanatory memorandum expressly situates the DNA alongside the White Paper, the Draghi report and the Letta report, all of which frame fragmentation, scale and investment capacity as central concerns for the sector.

That does not mean those texts uniformly reject competition. It means, however, that they helped normalise a way of speaking in which competition is too often treated as a constraint on investment rather than as the process that disciplines incumbents, rewards efficiency and drives better outcomes for users. Once that frame is accepted, the move from “competition” to “competitiveness” becomes easier to present as modernisation rather than as a substantive downgrade.

From there, the leap to consolidation is short. If the policy diagnosis begins from the premise that too many operators, too much retail pressure, or too much infrastructure rivalry are the source of the sector’s weakness, then concentration starts to look like the natural remedy. But that argument remains far weaker than it is often presented. A sector can suffer from low returns, delayed fibre rollout, uneven 5G deployment or strategic drift for many reasons that have little to do with excessive competition.

The consolidation fallacy

The core problem with the consolidation narrative is that it mistakes correlation for causation. Europe’s telecom sector has been shaped by a mix of legacy cost structures, spectrum pricing choices, regulatory uncertainty, fragmented capital allocation, uneven execution, and in some cases business decisions by operators themselves that have not always prioritised long-term network quality or innovation.

In that context, weakening the centrality of competition would solve very little. It would merely create ambiguity. It would invite the idea that the sector’s difficulties are the fault of rivalry itself, when the evidence in the policy debate points instead to a much more complex set of structural and managerial causes.

Competition is not the problem that must be managed away. In telecoms, as in other network industries, competition is what forces undertakings to invest efficiently, improve quality, lower prices where possible, and justify returns through performance rather than regulatory indulgence. Even the DNA proposal, in several recitals and substantive provisions, still recognises that competition safeguards end-user interests, supports consumer choice and remains central to the market analysis and SMP framework.

That internal tension is revealing. On the one hand, the proposal still relies throughout its market-regulation chapters on the language of effective competition, sustainable competition, end-user choice and the need to address bottlenecks and barriers to entry. On the other hand, at the level of high-level objectives, it weakens competition’s normative status. The result is conceptual ambiguity at the very top of the instrument.

Why the objective should be restored

Restoring competition as an explicit primary objective in the DNA would not be a nostalgic return to old formulas. It would be a clarifying move. It would remove the impression that the Union is quietly replacing the traditional pro-competitive framework with a more discretionary industrial-policy model centred on sectoral competitiveness and scale.

It would also send the right signal to regulators and courts. A self-standing competition objective makes clear that investment, innovation and resilience are not alternatives to rivalry but outcomes that, in well-designed telecom regulation, should be pursued alongside and through effective competition rather than against it.

Most importantly, restoring the objective would help clear away a misleading political story. The supposed problems of the telecom sector do not originate in competition as such. They arise from a coalescence of issues: fragmented implementation, costly and sometimes inconsistent regulatory choices, slow administrative processes, spectrum and permitting burdens, security-related overlaps, and firm-level strategic failures for which operators also bear responsibility.