More choice for consumers, fewer obstacles for smaller competitors: the DMA will open the gates to the Internet

Tomorrow, we will officially designate the first list of “gatekeepers” in the EU.

Gatekeepers are the online companies that provide an important gateway between businesses and consumers, which grants them the power to create a bottleneck in the digital economy.

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) will rein in the economic power of gatekeepers.

DMA imposes upfront clear obligations for gatekeepers to foster innovation, competitiveness and resilience of the Single Market.

Gatekeeper platforms will have to finally adapt their technologies and business models to comply with their DMA obligations.

It will give more choice to consumers.

It will create new opportunities for smaller innovative tech companies, thanks for instance to interoperability, sideloading, real-time data portability and fairness.

In a word: it will open the gates to the Internet!

While gatekeepers have 6 months to demonstrate their compliance with their obligations, they must immediately appoint a compliance officer, directly reporting to the Board, and inform the Commission of any planned merger or acquisition.

The DMA applies to the whole of the EU under the direct enforcement of the Commission, because it is the strength of our Single Market which gives the EU the power to regulate online platforms.

We have already started discussing compliance with companies, who have understood that the rules of the game have changed.

However, if the solution they will propose are not good enough, we will not hesitate to take strong action.

In case gatekeepers do not comply, they will face heavy sanctions. No online platform can behave as if it was “too big to care”.

Fines can go up to 10% of the global turnover and even beyond up to 20% that for repeated offenders, that may be also subject to the ultimate remedy of divestitures and structural separation when they systematically breach their obligations.

It was high time that Europe sets its rules of the game upfront, providing a clear enforceable legal framework rather than having to rely on lengthy (and not always effective…) antitrust investigations.

Background:

Cumulative criteria set out in the DMA for the designation of gatekeepers :

-????????? A size that impacts the Single Market (annual turnover in the EU of at least €7.5 billion in the last three financial years, or fair market value of at least €75 billion in the last financial year; and operations in at least 3 Member States), and

-????????? a very large and established position of economic power in the EU (more than 45 million monthly active end users and more than 10 000 yearly active business users during the last three years) in at least one of the ten core platform services set out in the DMA, such as search engines, social networking services and operating systems.