On Wednesday 6 September, the European Commission will designate the first list of companies to be considered as gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) (see EUROPE 13233/7).
Once designated, the companies concerned will have six months to demonstrate that they are complying with the obligations imposed. However, a compliance officer must be appointed immediately. The latter will report directly to the board of directors of the company concerned and must inform the Commission of any planned merger or acquisition.
“We have already started discussing compliance with companies, who have understood that the rules of the game have changed. However, if the solutions they propose are not sufficient, we will not hesitate to take energetic measures”, warned Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton.
These measures include the possibility of imposing fines of up to 10% of total turnover – or 20% for repeat offenders – or requiring the sale and structural separation of activities where obligations are “systematically” breached.
“It was time to turn things around and ensure that no online platform behaved as if it were too big to worry about”, added Mr Breton.
A number of companies, including Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook) and ByteDance (TikTok), had already notified the European Commission on 4 July to be designated as gatekeepers (see EUROPE 13215/3).
The DMA came into force on 1 November 2022 (see EUROPE 13054/14). To qualify as gatekeepers, companies must have more than 45 million active end-users in the EU and more than 10,000 business users over the last three years, and have had a valuation of at least €75 billion or a turnover of more than €7.5 billion over the last three financial years. (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)