Fairness as Equity, Honesty, and Justice: An Exercise in a Multilingual Analysis of the DMA

Like any other piece of EU legislation, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a multilingual legal instrument. However, its interpretation is often confined to the English-language discourse of competition law. This paper argues that this monolingual focus contradicts the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)’s fundamental principle of the equal authenticity of language versions, which states that no single language version should be relied upon in isolation. A key concept in the DMA’s regulatory framework is ‘fairness’, a notion that remains semantically elusive. Through a comparative linguistic analysis of nine of the official language versions of the DMA, this study reveals significant variability in how ‘fairness’ is translated. It suggests that these lexical choices reflect not only stylistic differences, but also distinct normative shifts towards notions of equity, honesty, or justice. Ultimately, this paper addresses a gap in the existing literature by providing a systematic, multilingual investigation. It posits that the autonomous and uniform application of the DMA requires a teleological interpretation that embraces linguistic diversity.