Yesterday (3 July 2023 at midnight) was the deadline under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) for potential gatekeepers to notify the Commission if they meet the thresholds for gatekeepers established by Article 3 of the DMA.
By the deadline, the Commission received notifications from the following companies: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft and Samsung.
The Commission now has 45 working days to make an assessment as to whether these undertakings meet the thresholds and to designate them as gatekeepers. Following their designation, gatekeepers will have six months to comply with the requirements in the DMA, at the latest by 6 March 2024.
Background: The DMA, which has applied since 2 May 2023, aims to ensure contestable and fair markets in the digital sector. It defines gatekeepers as those large online platforms that provide an important gateway between business users and consumers, whose position can grant them the power to create a bottleneck in the digital economy. To address these issues, the DMA defines a series of specific obligations that gatekeepers will need to respect, including prohibiting them from engaging in certain behaviours in a list of do's and don'ts.
More information is available in the dedicated Q&A.
Details
- Publication date
- 4 July 2023
- Authors
- Directorate-General for Competition | Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology