ZWeR 2025, 448

RWS Verlag Kommunikationsforum GmbH & Co. KG, Köln RWS Verlag Kommunikationsforum GmbH & Co. KG, Köln 2199-1723 Zeitschrift für Wettbewerbsrecht ZWeR 2025 AufsätzeLuc Wijffels* / Antoine Babinet**

From regulation to reality: Lessons from the Digital Markets Act’s early enforcement

The Digital Markets Act (“DMA”)1 entered into force on 1 November 2022. Its rules started to apply six months later, in May 2023. From that point, companies providing core platform services (“CPS”) meeting the quantitative thresholds set out in the DMA had two months, or until July 2023, to notify the Commission. The Commission then had until September 2023 to decide on whether to designate these companies as gatekeepers. Following designation, gatekeepers had six months – until March 2024 – to comply.

March 2024 is therefore the point from which one could legitimately expect to see tangibles changes as a result of the DMA. The DMA was devised to make digital markets fairer and more contestable, and to do so quickly. Its ex ante obligations are intended to be self-executing and foster a culture of compliance in relation to directly applicable “remedies” to the known market issues covered by the DMA. The question is then: how effective is the gatekeepers’ compliance one and a half year in?

March 2024 was also the point when the Commission’s monitoring and enforcement powers became effective. While the Commission has been intensively engaging with the gatekeepers during the designation phase with the aim to steer compliance, there was little doubt that effective compliance would require close monitoring and possibly enforcement. The Commission designated seven undertakings as gatekeepers in relation to 23 CPSs.2 While not all obligations apply to all types of core platform services, multiplying the DMA’s obligations with the number of core platform services results in a three-digit number of relevant obligations that the Commission must monitor and potentially enforce. Clearly, this requires efficient enforcement strategies and some degree of prioritisation. How did the Commission organise itself to achieve this?

This article aims to shed light on both of these questions. It gives insight on how the implementation, monitoring and enforcement of the DMA took place during this first year and offers a perspective on what can be expected going forward.

I. Talking rules: The art of regulatory dialogue
II. Promoting transparency: Compliance reports and workshops
III. Confronting non-compliance
IV. A DMA innovation: specification cases
V. Collaboration with NCAs and other regulators
VI. Conclusion

*: *)
Case handler in the European Commission team responsible for the implementation of the Digital Markets Act. Luc Wijffels has been involved in the Digital Markets Act since its initial stages and previously worked in the European Commission’s merger control team and in management consulting.
**: **)
Deputy head of unit in the European Commission team responsible for the implementation of the Digital Markets Act. Antoine Babinet previously worked in merger control at the European Commission, the French Autorité de la Concurrence and in private practice.
The information and views set out in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Commission.
1: 1)
Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 September 2022 on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector and amending Directives (EU) 2019/1937 and (EU) 2020/1828 (Digital Markets Act).
2: 2)
Since the initial wave of designations on 6 September 2023, the Commission has additionally designated Apple’s iPadOS as an operating system CPS following a market investigation on 29 April 2024 and designated Booking as a gatekeeper for its online intermediation service Booking.com on 13 May 2024. On 23 April 2025, the Commission found that Facebook Marketplace should no longer be designated under the DMA. This brings the total number of gatekeepers to seven and the total number of CPSs to 23. On 18 November 2025, the Commission opened market investigations to assess whether cloud computing services Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure should be designated under the DMA – this investigation is ongoing at the time of writing.