EUROPEAN POLITICS FUNDAMENTALS — Chapter 10 (Capstone), Exercise 1
Two Roles for One Institution
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QUESTION:
Using the DMA's own real timeline, explain how the European
Commission exercised two genuinely different kinds of power at two
different points in this story, and name which chapter covers each
one.

SOLUTION:

The Commission exercised two structurally different real powers at
two very different points in the DMA's own timeline.

The first was its INITIATIVE power, covered in Chapter 2. On 15
December 2020, the Commission proposed the Digital Markets Act —
exercising its real, exclusive right (per Article 17(2) TEU) to
introduce new EU legislation. No other EU institution could have
started this process; Parliament and the Council could only react to
and amend what the Commission had already put forward.

The second was its ENFORCEMENT power, also covered in Chapter 2 but
a genuinely separate function. Once the DMA was law and applicable
(from 2 May 2023), the Commission acted not as a legislative
initiator but as the body responsible for applying and enforcing that
law directly — designating six companies as "gatekeepers" on 6
September 2023, and later, on 23 April 2025, actually fining two of
them (Apple and Meta) for real, alleged breaches of the law's own
requirements.

The key distinction: the initiative power is about PROPOSING new
rules before they exist, while the enforcement power is about APPLYING
and penalizing breaches of rules that already exist and are already
in force. The same institution holds both, but they are genuinely
different jobs exercised at genuinely different stages of a law's
own life cycle.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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The strongest answers name both powers precisely (initiative vs.
enforcement) and tie each one to a specific, correctly-dated event in
the real timeline, rather than vaguely describing the Commission as
simply "powerful" at both points without distinguishing what kind of
power was actually being used.