EU Competition Law, Data Protection and Online Platforms. Data as Essential Facility provides a highly topical study of how EU competition law interacts with data on online platforms. All agree that the digital economy contributes to a dynamic evolution of markets and competition. Nonetheless, concerns are increasingly raised about the market dominance of a few key players. Since these companies hold the power to drive rivals out of business, regulators have begun to seek scope for competition enforcement in cases where companies claim that withholding data is needed to satisfy customers and cut costs. This book is the first to focus on how competition law enforcement tools can be applied to refusals of dominant firms to give access to data on online platforms, such as search engines, social networks, and e-commerce platforms – commonly referred to as the ‘gatekeepers’ of the Internet.