The European Commission announced, in a press release published on Monday 13 May, that it had designated the Booking.com platform as a ‘gatekeeper’ under the Digital Markets Act. It is the 7th company to be designated as a gatekeeper since the implementation of the DMA within the European Union (see EUROPE 13244/3).
Booking.com notified the Commission on 1 March because it had reached the thresholds required by the DMA on turnover, the number of end and professional users and market dominance (see EUROPE 13363/12).
After studying the information provided by the platform, the Commission took the view that it was indeed a gatekeeper and that it therefore had to comply with the strictest rules of the DMA. Starting today, Booking.com has 45 days to comply with European legislation.
At the same time, the Commission has opened a market investigation to further assess the rebuttal also submitted on 1 March by the social network X.
The latter argues that, although it meets the thresholds, X does not qualify as an important gateway between businesses and consumers. It should be noted, however, that X does not meet the threshold of €7.5 billion in revenues in the EU imposed by the DMA.
Finally, the Commission considers that TikTok Ads, which also submitted a rebuttal in March, does not represent a dominant position on the market that is significant and restrictive enough to fall within the scope of the DMA. (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)