Digital Markets Act (DMA)

It is addressed exclusively to companies that the European Commission has formally designated as gatekeepers.

For you as a retailer, developer or marketing manager in a mid-sized company, the DMA is therefore not a compliance project. You are on the other side: the regulation creates rights for you vis-à-vis Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, ByteDance and Booking: rights to data access, to non-discriminatory ranking and to free communication with your own customers.

What the DMA regulates and why it exists

Classic competition law intervenes after the fact. An authority has to prove market dominance and abuse in each individual case, and by the time proceedings are concluded with final effect, the market has often already become entrenched. The DMA reverses this logic: it formulates a catalogue of obligations and prohibitions in advance that applies without proof of abuse as soon as a service has been designated.

Contestability and fairness as two separate goals

The regulation pursues two purposes that are stated in its title. Contestability means that new providers must have a realistic chance of entering a platform market. Fairness refers to the relationship between platform and business user, i.e. the question of whether the conditions under which you sell or advertise on a platform are reasonable.

Both goals explain why many DMA obligations have little to do with prices and a lot to do with interfaces, default settings and data access. In platform ecosystems, competition arises at technical control points.

The DMA timeline

In practical terms, 7 March 2024 is the relevant date. Only from this day did the designated services actually have to comply with the obligations in Articles 5, 6 and 7. Article 3(10) gives each gatekeeper six months from designation.

Who counts as a gatekeeper

Article 3 DMA works with a presumption rule. A company is deemed a gatekeeper if it reaches three thresholds at the same time. These values are worth a close look, because they are frequently abbreviated in reporting.

• Economic size: annual turnover of at least 7.5 billion euros in the Union in each of the last three financial years, or an average market capitalisation of at least 75 billion euros in the last financial year, plus the same service in at least three Member States.
• Gateway function: at least 45 million monthly active end users in the EU and at least 10,000 yearly active business users in the last financial year.
• Durability: the user thresholds were reached in each of the last three financial years.

The turnover threshold refers to Union turnover, not worldwide turnover. With fines it is the other way round: there, total worldwide turnover counts. Anyone who confuses the two figures considerably underestimates the sanction risk for the corporations.

Under Article 3(8), the Commission can also designate a company if it misses the quantitative thresholds but meets the qualitative criteria. Conversely, a company can present substantiated arguments that it is not a gatekeeper despite reaching the thresholds.

The designated gatekeepers and their services

On 6 September 2023, the Commission designated six companies with 22 core platform services. Since then the list has grown, and shrunk in one place: Apple was added with iPadOS, Booking with Booking.com, and Meta was de-designated for Facebook Marketplace on 23 April 2025. As of 16 October 2026, 23 core platform services are designated. Two court decisions from 2026 reviewed the designations without changing the number: on 3 June 2026 (T-1078/23), the General Court of the EU additionally annulled Meta's original designation for Facebook Marketplace but upheld the Messenger designation; the court dismissed Apple's actions against its designation on 8 July 2026. The number is likely to change soon: see the ongoing cloud market investigations further below.

• Alphabet: Google Search, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, YouTube, Google Chrome, Android Mobile, Google Ads
• Apple: App Store, iOS, iPadOS, Safari
• Meta: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Meta Ads
• Amazon: Marketplace, Amazon Advertising
• Microsoft: LinkedIn, Windows PC OS
• ByteDance: TikTok
• Booking: Booking.com as an online intermediation service

Important in practice: the obligations attach to the individual designated service, not to the group. A Google product that is not listed in the designation decision is not subject to Articles 5 to 7.

The obligations and prohibitions in Articles 5, 6 and 7

Article 5: directly applicable prohibitions

• Combining data (para. 2): personal data may not be combined or cross-used across services unless the end user has expressly consented to the GDPR standard. If consent is refused, the gatekeeper may ask again only once within a year.
• Price parity (para. 3): the gatekeeper may not prevent you from offering the same products via other channels or your own shop at different prices and conditions.
• Anti-steering (para. 4): you may communicate and promote offers to end users free of charge and conclude contracts with them, including outside the platform.
• No obligation to use gatekeeper services (para. 7): no gatekeeper may force you to use its identification service, its browser engine or its payment system.
• No tying (para. 8): access to one service may not depend on your registering for another.
• Advertising transparency (paras. 9 and 10): advertisers and publishers receive information daily and free of charge on request about prices, fees, remuneration and the underlying metrics.

Article 6: obligations that the Commission can specify

• No use of business users' data (para. 2): the gatekeeper may not use non-public data of its business users (click, query, view and voice data) in competition against them.
• Uninstalling and choice screens (para. 3): pre-installed apps must be uninstallable and default settings changeable. On first use, users must be able to choose a search engine, browser or virtual assistant from a list of major providers.
• Alternative app stores (para. 4): third-party apps and third-party app stores must be installable and usable, including bypassing the gatekeeper's store.
• Ban on self-preferencing (para. 5): the gatekeeper's own services may not be favoured in ranking, indexing and crawling. Ranking must be transparent, fair and non-discriminatory.
• Interoperability (para. 7): hardware and software features that the gatekeeper uses itself must be accessible to third parties free of charge.
• Data portability and access to business data (paras. 9 and 10): end users can take their data with them; business users receive permanent real-time access to the data generated by their own activity.
• Search data for competitors (para. 11): other search engines receive access to ranking, query, click and view data on FRAND terms, with personal data anonymised.
• Fair access conditions (para. 12): app stores, search engines and social networks must publish fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory conditions, including a dispute resolution mechanism.

Article 7 adds the interoperability of messaging services. In the 2026 review, the Commission examined whether this obligation should be extended to social networks and considered this premature.

Sanctions: up to 10, or 20 per cent for repeat offences

Article 30 DMA sets the framework. In the event of an infringement of Articles 5, 6 or 7, the Commission can impose fines of up to 10 per cent of the total worldwide turnover in the preceding financial year. For an identical or similar infringement in the same service within eight years, the framework rises to 20 per cent.

Procedural infringements (incorrect information, refused inspections, a missing compliance function) carry fines of up to 1 per cent of total worldwide turnover. On top of this come periodic penalty payments if a company fails to comply with a remedy decision: Article 31 DMA allows up to 5 per cent of the average daily worldwide turnover in the preceding financial year, per day. Commission press releases occasionally shorten this to "5 per cent of total worldwide turnover"; the wording of the regulation is decisive.

Relationship to competition law, the DSA and the GDPR

The DMA does not displace competition law. Article 1 makes it clear that Articles 101 and 102 TFEU as well as national rules against anticompetitive agreements and abuse of market power remain unaffected. Both regimes can run in parallel; the Commission can pursue the same facts under competition law and under the DMA.

The DMA differs from the Digital Services Act in its subject matter. The DSA regulates content, moderation, notice procedures and transparency of online services. The DMA regulates market power and economic relationships. A company can be subject to both regimes; Meta and Google are.

The DMA is interlinked with the GDPR: Article 5(2) expressly refers to the concept of consent in the General Data Protection Regulation. The Commission and the European Data Protection Board are working on joint guidelines on the interplay between the two sets of rules. The DMA is, on the other hand, clearly separate from the AI Act regime, even though the Commission now examines AI services from a DMA perspective.

Enforcement in practice

In March 2024, the Commission opened the first non-compliance proceedings against Alphabet, Apple and Meta: for self-preferencing in Google Play and Google Search, for the App Store and the Safari choice screen, and for the "pay or consent" model. On 19 March 2025, it presented preliminary findings to Alphabet and specified Apple's interoperability obligations by decision.

The first fines came on 23 April 2025: 500 million euros against Apple for infringing the anti-steering obligation and 200 million euros against Meta, because its advertising model did not give users a genuine choice of a less data-intensive variant.

Real-world example: the Google decisions of 23 July 2026

On 23 July 2026, the Commission took two decisions against Google and imposed a total of 890 million euros. 460 million euros related to self-preferencing in Google Search: Google's own services for shopping, hotels, transport and sports results were placed more prominently (at the top of the results page, with enhanced visuals and filters), while comparable third-party providers did not receive this prominence.

430 million euros related to steering restrictions in Google Play. App developers could not freely promote offers outside the store or conclude contracts in channels of their choice. The Commission also expressly criticised the level of the steering fees and the duration for which they were charged.

Executive Vice-President Teresa Ribera summed up the logic: "The best products should win because they are better." The 60-day deadline expired on 21 September 2026. Since September 2026, Google has rebuilt the layout of search results in the EEA and now shows an aggregator unit and a supplier unit for hotels, flights, long-distance transport and products. An assessment of this implementation by the Commission is not yet available. Details are in the announcement by the European Commission.

What the first DMA review in 2026 found

Article 53 obliges the Commission to review the DMA every three years. The first report was due by 3 May 2026 and appeared on 28 April 2026. Its result: the regulation is working but has not yet been exhausted. The Commission considers an amendment to the legislation premature; the designation criteria remain unchanged.

Specifically, the review names measurable effects: alternative browsers and search engines such as Ecosia, Qwant, DuckDuckGo and Aloha recorded growth after the choice screens were introduced, in some cases significantly in Germany and France. Alternative app stores such as Aptoide, the Epic Games Store and AltStore launched on Apple's operating systems. Around 40 third-party developers, many of them SMEs, now connect to gatekeeper APIs for data transfer.

The report also names open issues: circumvention strategies by the gatekeepers, technical hurdles with interoperability and a lack of awareness among small companies. In parallel, three market investigations into cloud services have been running since November 2025, including the question of whether Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure should be designated as gatekeepers. On 25 June 2026, the Commission communicated its preliminary position that Amazon and Microsoft should be designated as gatekeepers for their cloud services; the final decision is expected within the twelve-month benchmark of Article 17, i.e. by around November 2026. The Commission concluded the specification proceedings against Alphabet on interoperability and search data sharing (both related to AI), opened on 27 January 2026, with binding decisions on 16 July 2026.

What the DMA means in practice for German mid-sized companies

Visibility and SEO

The ban on self-preferencing has a direct effect on your organic visibility. If Google may no longer give preferential placement to its own shopping, hotel or transport modules, specialised providers move back up. The 2026 Google decision is the clearest lever for this so far: it requires non-discriminatory treatment, not just transparency.

In practice, this means that cleanly marked-up product, offer and review data via schema markup contributes more to visibility, because your content can compete in the same modules. For local providers, the same applies in combination with the Google Business Profile.

App distribution

If you run an app, Article 5(4) and Article 6(4) are the relevant provisions. You may point your users to cheaper offers outside the store, link to them and conclude contracts there. On iOS and iPadOS, you can now also distribute your app from your own website. This noticeably changes the calculation of in-app purchases.

Data access

Article 6(10) gives you as a business user a right to permanent real-time access to the data generated by your activity on a platform, free of charge and in high quality. Via Article 5(9), advertisers receive daily disclosure of prices, fees and metrics. You have to assert these claims actively; they are not delivered automatically. In addition, the EU Data Act governs access to data from connected products.

Choice screens and sales channels

Choice screens distribute search queries more widely. For your SEA and SEO planning, this means that reach outside Google becomes measurable and a test on Bing, Ecosia or DuckDuckGo can be worthwhile. A second example from the review: hotels and car rental companies may set their own prices and conditions on their own channels and make better offers outside platforms such as Booking.com. Anyone building up direct sales now has a legal basis for doing so.

Common misconceptions

• "The DMA applies to all platforms." It only applies to designated core platform services of designated gatekeepers. A medium-sized marketplace does not fall under it.
• "We have to implement something." Small and medium-sized enterprises have no DMA obligations. They are beneficiaries, not obligated parties.
• "The DMA and the DSA are the same law." They are two separate regulations with different subject matter that were adopted together.
• "Fines are based on EU turnover." Article 30 refers to total worldwide turnover; only the designation threshold uses Union turnover.

The DMA is therefore above all a tool that you have to use for it to have an effect. The Commission itself names low awareness among SMEs as one of the biggest brakes. Anyone who knows which data claims, steering freedoms and ranking rights exist can demand them from platform operators and, in the event of continued refusal, address them via the Commission's complaint channels. You can find the full text of the regulation on EUR-Lex.