November 5, 2018 Interim Summary (Draft) Issued by Study Group on Trading Environmental Improvements for Digital Platformers

The Cabinet’s decision of June 2018, Future Investment Strategy 2018, states that basic principles should be determined by the end of the current fiscal year and specify concrete measures as soon as possible for the development of rules corresponding to the emergence of platformer-type businesses. With consideration of this decision, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the Fair Trade Commission started studying and evaluating the national systems of other countries surrounding digital platformers and issues and responses in Japan to summarize the points of the study. For this purpose, academic experts with diverse knowledge, including knowledge of competition policy, information policy, and consumer policy, were invited to organize a study group on trading environmental improvements for digital platformers for the above study and evaluation.
Recently, the study group has drafted an interim summary as a result of their study.