Digital Markets Act

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is an EU regulation that aims to make the digital economy fairer and more contestable. The regulation entered into force on 1 November 2022 and became applicable, for the most part, on 2 May 2023. The DMA aims at ensuring a higher degree of competition in European digital markets by preventing large companies from abusing their market power and by allowing new players to enter the market. This regulation targets the largest digital platforms operating in the European Union. They are also known as "gatekeepers" due to the "durable" market position in some digital sectors and because they also meet certain criteria related to the number of users, their turnovers, or capitalisation. Twenty-two services across six companies (deemed "gatekeepers") – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft – were identified as "core platform services" by the EU in September 2023. These companies had until 6 March 2024 to comply with all of the Act's provisions. The list of obligations includes prohibitions on combining data collected from two different services belonging to the same company (e.g., in the case of Meta, its social network Facebook and its communication platform WhatsApp); provisions for the protection of platforms' business users (including advertisers and publishers); legal instruments against the self-preferencing methods used by platforms for promoting their own products (e.g., preferential results for Google's products or services when using Google Search); provisions concerning the pre-installation of some services (e.g., Android); provisions related to bundling practices; and provisions for ensuring interoperability, portability, and access to data for businesses and end-users of platforms. There is also provisions to ensure the end user can remove any pre-installed software. Non-compliance may lead to sanctions, including fines of up to 10% of the worldwide turnover. According to the European Commission, the main objective of this regulation is to regulate the behaviour of the so-called "Big Tech" firms within the European Single Market and beyond. The Commission aims to guarantee a fair level of competition ("level playing field") on the highly concentrated digital European markets, which are often characterised by a "winner takes all" configuration. The DMA covers eight different sectors, which it refers to as Core Platforms Services (CPS). Due to the presence of gatekeepers who, to a certain degree, affect the market contestability, the CPS are considered problematic by the European Commission: online search engines (e.g. Google Search); online intermediation services (e.g. Google Play Store, Apple's App Store); social networks (e.g. Facebook); video sharing platforms (e.g. YouTube); communication platforms (e.g. WhatsApp, Gmail); advertising services (e.g. Google Ads); operating systems (e.g. Android, iOS); cloud services (e.g. Amazon Web Services). In April 2024, Reuters reported on data from six companies which showed that in the first month after the regulations were implemented, independent browsers had seen a spike in users. The Cyprus-based Aloha Browser said users in the EU jumped 250% in March. Norway-based Vivaldi, Germany-based Ecosia and United States-based Brave have also seen user numbers rise following the new regulation.