On September 6th 2023, the European Commission announced the identification of the platforms, that, within the next 6 months, will have to comply with the new obligations imposed by the Digital Markets Act.
The gatekeepers selected by the Commission are six:
- Alphabet (parent company of Google);
- Amazon;
- Apple;
- ByteDance (parent company of Tiktok);
- Meta (Facebook).
What is the Digital Markets Act?
On September 14th 2022 the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union signed the Regulation on digital markets – Digital Markets Act or DMA- with the goal to promote the offer of quality digital services and the fair costs for consumers.
The Digital Markets Act, therefore, aims to guarantee the competitiveness of the digital market through a set of rules designed to limit the commercial practices of the gatekeepers, that is big platforms that, on their own, hold the larger share of the market.
On the basis of the Regulation, the gatekeepers are those platforms that have more that 45 million monthly active final users and that have generated a turnover of at least 7,5 billion euros in the last 3 fiscal years.
After having evaluated the data communicated by the single platforms, the Commissions announced the list of those that, based on the DMA, are considered gatekeepers.
Obligations for gatekeepers under Digital Markets Act
In order to create the conditions for a fairer competition between digital companies, gatekeepers are forbidden to excessively promote their products and to impose limitations or unfair conditions to commercial users.
Imposing the platform method of payment as sole payment method to users will be also prohibited. Big platform will not be able to pre-install certain software applications and re-use the personal data collected for a service for a different service. Gatekeepers will also have to stop the use of certain aggregated sale practices, such as the sale of different products in the same bundle.
Google, Amazon, Apple, Tiktok, Meta e Microsoft will have until March 2024 to adapt the offer of their services to the new bans introduced by DMA.
If they do not, they will risk to incur in a fine up to 10% of their worldwide turnover or, in case of repeated offence, up to 20%.
Ilaria Feriti