Adopted September 14, 2022 by the European Parliament and the Council "on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector and amending Directives (EU) 2019/1937 and (EU) 2020/1828," published in the Official Journal on October 12, 2022 (L 265/1) and in force from November 1, 2022. CELEX 32022R1925. See Digital Markets Act (EU).
Purpose and scope
Article 1(1) states the purpose as contributing "to the proper functioning of the internal market by laying down harmonised rules ensuring for all businesses, contestable and fair markets in the digital sector across the Union where gatekeepers are present."
Its jurisdictional reach is defined by the location of users rather than of the regulated firm: the regulation applies to core platform services offered "to business users established in the Union or end users established or located in the Union, irrespective of the place of establishment or residence of the gatekeepers and irrespective of the law otherwise applicable."
Article 1(5) forecloses member-state divergence: "Member States shall not impose further obligations on gatekeepers by way of laws, regulations or administrative measures for the purpose of ensuring contestable and fair markets," while preserving obligations "for matters falling outside the scope of this Regulation." Article 1(6) preserves Articles 101 and 102 TFEU and national merger control, so the DMA operates alongside rather than in place of competition law.
The recitals set out the market characteristics the regulation is built on: "extreme scale economies, which often result from nearly zero marginal costs to add business users or end users," together with "very strong network effects," multisidedness, dependence, "lock-in effects, a lack of multi-homing for the same purpose by end users, vertical integration, and data driven-advantages."
Core platform services
Article 2(2) enumerates ten categories: online intermediation services; online search engines; online social networking services; video-sharing platform services; number-independent interpersonal communications services; operating systems; web browsers; virtual assistants; cloud computing services; and online advertising services provided by an undertaking that provides any of the preceding.
Three of these determine the regulation's application to AI. A virtual assistant is defined at Article 2(12) as "a software that can process demands, tasks or questions, including those based on audio, visual, written input, gestures or motions, and that, based on those demands, tasks or questions, provides access to other services or controls connected physical devices" — a definition drafted before general-purpose assistants but broad enough to reach them. An operating system is "a system software that controls the basic functions of the hardware or software and enables software applications to run on it," which is the hook for obligations about what may be installed on a device.
Designation
Article 3(1) sets three cumulative requirements: significant impact on the internal market; provision of a core platform service that is "an important gateway for business users to reach end users"; and "an entrenched and durable position, in its operations, or it is foreseeable that it will enjoy such a position in the near future."
Article 3(2) converts these into rebuttable quantitative presumptions:
| Limb | Presumption |
|---|---|
| Significant impact | Annual Union turnover ≥ €7.5 billion in each of the last three financial years, or average market capitalisation ≥ €75 billion in the last financial year, plus provision of the same core platform service in at least three Member States |
| Important gateway | ≥ 45 million monthly active EU end users and ≥ 10,000 yearly active EU business users in the last financial year |
| Entrenched and durable | The gateway thresholds met in each of the last three financial years |
The burden runs toward designation. Undertakings meeting the thresholds must notify the Commission within two months, and if they fail to do so and fail to answer an information request, "the Commission shall still be entitled to designate that undertaking as a gatekeeper, based on information available to the Commission." A firm may rebut the presumptions with "sufficiently substantiated arguments," but the Commission may reject them without procedure where they "do not manifestly call into question the presumptions." The Commission may also designate outside the thresholds under Article 3(8) where the Article 3(1) requirements are met on their own terms.
Obligations
The regulation splits obligations into two articles with different legal character. Article 5 obligations are self-executing. Article 6 obligations are "susceptible of being further specified under Article 8," meaning the Commission can issue specification decisions telling a particular gatekeeper what compliance requires for a particular service — the mechanism used in the July 2026 decisions on Android and rival AI assistants.
Article 5 prohibits, among other things, processing end-user personal data from third-party services for advertising; combining personal data across the gatekeeper's services; cross-using personal data between services; and signing users in to other services to combine data — all "unless the end user has been presented with the specific choice and has given consent" under the GDPR, with a bar on repeating a refused consent request "more than once within a period of one year." It also requires gatekeepers to permit business users to offer different prices elsewhere (anti-steering), to communicate and contract with users acquired through the platform "free of charge," and not to require use of the gatekeeper's own identification service, web browser engine, or payment service. Articles 5(9) and 5(10) require daily, free disclosure to advertisers and publishers of prices, fees, remuneration, and the metrics on which they are calculated.
Article 6(2) bars a gatekeeper from using, in competition with business users, "any data that is not publicly available that is generated or provided by those business users," with the covered data expressly including "click, search, view and voice data." Article 6(3) requires that end users be able to "easily un-install any software applications on the operating system of the gatekeeper," subject to an exception only for applications "essential for the functioning of the operating system or of the device."
Enforcement
Article 30 sets the penalty structure: fines "not exceeding 10 % of its total worldwide turnover in the preceding financial year" for intentional or negligent failure to comply with Articles 5, 6, or 7, with Article 8(2) specification measures, with Article 18(1) remedies, with interim measures, or with binding commitments. For repeat infringement — "the same or a similar infringement of an obligation laid down in Article 5, 6 or 7 in relation to the same core platform service as it was found to have committed in a non-compliance decision adopted in the 8 preceding years" — the ceiling rises to 20% of total worldwide turnover.
A separate 1% ceiling applies to procedural failures, including failure to provide information for designation assessment, failure to notify under Article 3(3), failure "to provide access to data, algorithms or information about testing," refusal to submit to inspection, and failure "to introduce a compliance function in accordance with Article 28."
Amounts turn on "the gravity, duration, recurrence, and, for fines imposed pursuant to paragraph 3, delay caused to the proceedings."
Relationships
- supports: Digital Markets Act (EU) — the primary text behind the tracking page
- related: AI Antitrust — the virtual-assistant and operating-system definitions are what bring AI assistants within scope
- related: EU AI Act (Regulation 2024/1689), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Google DeepMind