Survey on the Digital Markets Act: 2024, Compliance Starts

Abstract

The European Union (EU)’s Digital Markets Act (DMA or the regulation)1 entered into force in November 2022, and its rules started to apply six months later, in May 2023. From that date on, the firms meeting the quantitative thresholds set out in Article 3(2) DMA had two months to notify the European Commission (EC) of their status as a ‘gatekeeper’.2 Given the regulation’s need for speediness, the EC issued its first six designation decisions in September 2023.3 In accordance with Article 3(10) DMA, the designation of these first six gatekeepers (Alphabet, also known as Google, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, also known as TikTok, Meta, and Microsoft) meant that they ought to comply with the regulation’s substantive provisions, ie Articles 5, 6, and 7 (‘obligations for gatekeepers’), by March 2024. The compliance reports covering the gatekeeper’s transformations as a consequence of the application of the DMA’s obligations were also due that same date. All gatekeepers complied with the obligation of submitting their compliance reports under Article 11 DMA, even though some of the transformations to their business models were more comprehensive than others.4 For instance, both Amazon and Apple were quite short for words in demonstrating their compliance with the DMA in their non-confidential versions of their compliance reports, whereas Microsoft and Alphabet were much more detailed in the evidence they submitted to the EC and the public.