Welcome back to Emlex's weekly podcast on global regulatory affairs. My name is James Panicki. I'm

Mlex's senior editor in the Asia Pacific office, and it's great to be with you again. Now speak to

any of the regulators around the world who are tasked with overseeing global tech giants

and the question of whether the tools they have at their disposal are adequate will usually come up.

With technology moving so fast, they say, the traditional antitrust and merger

regulatory approaches have been outpaced and are no longer fit the purpose. Of course, you'd be

hard-pressed to find a regulator demanding fewer rather than more powers. That said, the global

momentum is certainly building for new regulatory procedures and approaches to take on the digital platforms.

Today we'll examine two examples of that.

In a few minutes' time, we'll cross to London to talk about how the UK competition regulator is advancing the need for new powers with which to manage acquisitions

involving tech companies. First up, though, let's go to the heart of the EU, where the European

Commission, which is the bloc's regulator, has been pondering whether the time has come to

establish a code of conduct and stronger powers to deal with big tech.

It's not an easy undertaking, of course. All EU lawmaking is the result of months,

if not years of horse trading among EU institutions and member states.

Yet the proposal that we first talked about in a podcast a few months ago is now taking

form. Our chaperone in this maze a few months ago is now taking form.

Our chaperone in this maze is, as always, Nicholas Hurst, our chief correspondent in Brussels

covering antitrust among other things. And he joins me now.

Okay, Nicholas, the last time we spoke, the Commission was talking about developing this

code of conduct and acquiring new powers

to investigate market structure. How is that project coming along? It's coming along a fair clip,

...