Further information about the DMA (Questions and Answers)

Please address any questions, submissions or meeting requests to EC-DMAec [dot] europa [dot] eu (EC-DMA[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu).

Please address your issues or questions to COMP-DMA-registryec [dot] europa [dot] eu (COMP-DMA-registry[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)

Please send your question to EC-DMAec [dot] europa [dot] eu (EC-DMA[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu).

EU SEND is a web based exchange platform that ensures secure transmission of documents. Please clearly mention the relevant case number or add "DMA" in your subject.

Please submit your Form GD and a PoA if needed, using EU SEND stating the relevant DMA case numbers in the subject. Please also send your Form GD by email to EC-DMAec [dot] europa [dot] eu (EC-DMA[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu) and the relevant CPS mailing lists.

In case you have not received an email listing your DMA case numbers, please submit your Form GD via EU SEND stating “DMA Form GD” in the subject and send a copy to EC-DMAec [dot] europa [dot] eu (EC-DMA[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu).

When submitting your Form GD in EU SEND you will receive an upload notice. You will, in addition, receive an acknowledgement of receipt from the DMA Registry once your submission has been processed.

If you are unable to submit your Form GD via EU SEND, please send it to EC-DMAec [dot] europa [dot] eu (EC-DMA[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu) and COMP-DMA-Registryec [dot] europa [dot] eu (COMP-DMA-Registry[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu).

The Commission may send you a request for information using eRFI, which is the Commission's electronic investigative platform.

In the context of the Commission’s enforcement of the Digital Markets Act, the Commission may have to grant gatekeepers or concerned undertakings access to documents that it has obtained from third parties in the context of its enforcement powers. The documents concerned are any documents submitted by third parties as well as minutes of meetings with third parties.

This process is called “access to the file” and seeks to preserve the right to be heard of gatekeepers or concerned undertakings. Access to the file is granted upon request and only to those companies that are addressees of the Commission’s preliminary findings, i.e. gatekeepers or concerned undertakings. Preliminary findings are a communication of the Commission to the addressee of a potential Commission decision setting out its preliminary assessment and the evidence the Commission has gathered in support of its potential decision.

Third parties are required to identify the confidential information and/or business secrets in the documents they submit or in the minutes of the meetings, and explain why it should be treated as such. Where those documents or minutes contain confidential information and/or business secrets, two versions of those documents or minutes will be drawn up: a confidential and a non-confidential version.

1. Non-confidential versions of documents:

• Access to non-confidential versions of documents which the Commission mentions in its preliminary findings will be granted pursuant to Article 34 of the DMA Regulation and Article 8(2) of the Commission Implementing Regulation.
• The Commission may include only non-confidential information in the version of decisions that it publishes pursuant to Article 44 of the DMA Regulation.

2. Confidential versions of documents:

• In order to enable gatekeepers or concerned undertakings to exercise their right to be heard in the relevant proceedings, the Commission will, under the “terms of disclosure” set out in a Commission decision in line with Article 8(3) of the Commission Implementing Regulation, grant access to confidential versions of third party documents to a limited circle of external legal/economic counsels or external technical experts. The terms of disclosure decision determines the conditions of access and imposes strict obligations on those who get access. Non-compliance with the terms of disclosure is subject to fines under Article 30(3)(k) of the DMA Regulation.
• In exceptional circumstances, the Commission may decide not to grant access to certain confidential documents or to grant access only to partially redacted documents if it determines that the likely harm of disclosure, on balance, outweighs the importance of disclosure of the full confidential documents for the exercise of the gatekeepers’ right to be heard.

1. Third parties should send to the Commission compliance-related submissions which are specific to each gatekeeper’s compliance with the DMA, and do so by separate emails. 

Concretely, this means that third parties should:

- Prepare multiple submissions regarding each gatekeeper’s or concerned undertaking’s compliance with the DMA. General information should be repeated in each submission, but each version of the submission should contain only information related to a specific gatekeeper or concerned undertaking and its compliance with the DMA. 

- Send these submissions in separate emails to EC-DMAec [dot] europa [dot] eu (EC-DMA[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu) and the respective case team if you know the email address, and communicate on each gatekeeper or concerned undertaking in a dedicated email thread. 

Please note that this does not apply to documents that are already accessible to the public (i.e., information that is published, that is capable of being inferred from publicly available information, or that is available to specialist circles). An example of such public information may be a report or study prepared by the third party that is publicly available, but looks into compliance of several gatekeepers with one or more obligations under the DMA.

2. If third parties send observations concerning several gatekeepers’ compliance solutions in a single document or email, the Commission will revert to third parties and require them to re-submit the documents along the lines explained above (i.e. submission and/or email per gatekeeper’s (or concerned undertaking’s) compliance with the DMA).

3. Please note that this process is separate from the requirement to identify confidential information and/or business secrets (see the Q&A relating to how the Commission treats confidential information in the context of the DMA).

The Form GD is part of the Procedural Implementing Regulation 2023/814, notably Annex I thereof, which you can find here.

Please contact EC-DMAec [dot] europa [dot] eu (EC-DMA[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu) with any question you may have on the designation process.

In those cases, the Commission will inform the notifying undertaking of its preliminary views before adopting a designation decision. Having regard to the deadline for issuing its designation decision as set out in Article 3(4) DMA, the Commission will give the notifying undertaking the opportunity to submit observations on its preliminary views within five working days. Where relevant, the Commission will provide the notifying undertaking with non-confidential versions of key documents to which specific reference is made in its preliminary views and which are not already available to the notifying undertaking. The Commission will take into account the notifying undertaking’s observations (if any) for the purposes of its decision.