8th Conference on the Regulation of Infrastructures: Digital Platforms – The New Network Industries? How to regulate them?

On 20 – 21^st June 2019 the Florence School of Regulation hosted its 8^th Conference on the Regulation of Infrastructures, the annual event coordinated by FSR-Transport, which brings together all FSR Areas.

This two-day conference gathered academics including PhD students, PostDocs and assistant/associate/full Professors, as well as academically minded practitioners for interactive thematic sessions aimed at identifying the key challenges of digitalisation for traditional network industries; discovering various regulatory approaches to platforms and determining benefit scenarios for consumers and to the platforms themselves.

FSR-Transport Director Matthias Finger concluded the conference by outlining three key takeaways, or ‘digitalisation’ discourses, which emerged from the discussions, namely:

• Digitalisation as an enabler to liberalisation
• Consumer protection and welfare as key considerations in digitalisation regulation
• Digitalisation as a new ‘infrastructure’ itself

For further background information and the final agenda of the conference click here. 

We would like to thank all participants for travelling to Florence and contributing to a lively debate.

In the meantime, we are happy to announce that the 9^th edition of the Conference on the Regulation of Infrastructures will focus on ‘Sector Coupling’ and will take place on 25-26^th June 2020 in Florence. Keep an eye on the FSR-Transport website for further information in the coming months.