The Digital Markets Act

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) establishes a set of rules to regulate large digital companies with activities in the EU – known as ‘gatekeepers’ – to ensure that markets impacted by them remain fair and competitive and to promote innovation, growth and competitiveness. 

Gatekeepers are large digital platforms providing ‘core platform services’ in the EU and include online search engines, social networks, and cloud computing and video sharing service providers.

Affected businesses

The DMA will be felt most acutely by the designated gatekeepers. As of September 2024, there are seven designated gatekeepers covering 24 core platform services.

Importantly, however, many of the conduct requirements will impact nondesignated companies that operate in the same or related markets that may, for example, be able to gain access to previously unavailable data from the gatekeepers, or gain interoperability with a gatekeepers’ own services in certain situations.

Key impacts

Only companies meeting certain size and financial thresholds can be designated by the European Commission as gatekeepers.

Companies are required to self-assess whether they meet the gatekeeper thresholds and notify the European Commission if they do.

Companies may be designated as gatekeepers where they satisfy the following qualitative criteria:

• The company has a significant impact on the EU internal market.
• The company provides a core platform service which acts as an important gateway for business users to reach final consumers.
• The company has an entrenched and durable position in its operations or will foreseeably enjoy such a position in the future.

The DMA also sets out quantitative thresholds based on turnover, market capitalisation and active user metrics for each of the three qualitative criteria.

Fulfilment of the qualitative criteria is presumed when a company providing a core platform service meets the quantitative thresholds.

Once designated, companies are required to comply with a large number of obligations relating to, among others, the processing of personal data, self-preferencing, and interoperability with third-party platforms and services, as well as access to data by other businesses.

Gatekeepers also are required to produce and publish audited reports describing any consumer profiling techniques used by the gatekeepers on or across their core platform services.

Enforcement

The DMA is backed by extensive enforcement powers, with the European Commission being able to impose fines of up to 10% of a company’s worldwide turnover (or 20% for repeated infringements).

The European Commission also is able to impose behavioural and structural remedies where gatekeepers are found to have systematically infringed the DMA obligations.

Key timings

The DMA came into force in 2023, with the full set of obligations becoming binding on gatekeepers in 2024.

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