News item | 01-05-2023 | 9:00 am
Businesses and consumers using the largest digital platforms will take full advantage of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) effective May 2, 2023. The DMA protects European consumers and entrepreneurs, ensures more competition and convenience in digital markets and regulates better supervision of mergers and acquisitions, for example.
The DMA will soon allow users of these platforms to send individual messages from one messaging service to another. App developers may also no longer be forced to use the payment system app stores and platforms may not favor their own products or services, for example by putting them at the top of search results. The DMA also regulates the possibility to transfer your own data from one platform to another and the possibility to remove pre-installed apps. There will also be a broader reporting obligation to be able to assess mergers and acquisitions in the digital economy.
Minister Micky Adriaansens (Economic Affairs and Climate): “These European rules give entrepreneurs of all sizes more growth opportunities, promote fair competition and better protect consumers. The DMA will also make us less dependent on the very largest platforms. As a result, entrepreneurs can do business better via the internet and consumers can more easily buy and sell products.”
Designate gatekeepers
The DMA introduces these additional competition rules for the world’s 10 to 15 largest online platforms with a so-called gatekeeper position that users can hardly ignore. Now that the law has entered into force, the European Commission will decide from September 2023 on which platforms are gatekeepers. Gatekeepers then have 6 months to comply with the rules from the DMA. This group of online platforms must therefore comply with various prohibitions and obligations under penalty of high fines.
A platform falls under the DMA as a gatekeeper if it provides the same core platform service in at least three EU Member States and has an annual turnover of €7.5 billion in the EU in the last 3 years or if it has a market value of at least €75 billion in the past year. Also, such a platform must have at least 45 million active end users for 3 years and at least 10,000 business users based in the EU.