Sources: an EU investigation is set to find that Azure and AWS meet DMA thresholds, as the EU strengthens its regulatory scrutiny of the cloud sector
Microsoft Corp.'s Azure and Amazon Web Services are set to be designated under the European Union's strict rulebook for Big Tech.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Commission opened its DMA inquiry into AWS and Azure in November 2025 after identifying their very strong positions, then said in June that the pair were the EU's largest and second-largest cloud services in its preliminary findings on cloud-market scale. The reported outcome would turn that investigation into a formal regulatory perimeter for the two providers.
The case extends a competition concern already raised in the UK, where Ofcom referred AWS, Azure and Google Cloud for further scrutiny over possible limits on cloud competition. It also places cloud infrastructure alongside the EU's broader effort to apply platform rules to Big Tech.
First-order effects
- If the reported designation is confirmed, AWS and Azure would be brought under the DMA's strict rulebook, requiring Microsoft and Amazon to prepare for EU-specific compliance obligations.
- Enterprise cloud customers would gain a formal avenue for DMA-based scrutiny of conduct by the two largest providers identified in the Commission's preliminary findings.
Second-order effects
- Google Cloud, which was named alongside AWS and Azure when the Commission considered a possible DMA inquiry, faces sharper pressure to distinguish its commercial terms and interoperability posture from designated rivals.
- The designation process would make cloud contracting and switching conditions a more prominent competitive issue for AWS and Azure's European customers and partners.
Third-order effects
- DMA scrutiny of AWS and Azure would widen the EU's platform-regulation model from consumer-facing digital services to the infrastructure layer on which businesses run software and AI workloads.
- If cloud oversight focuses on switching and access conditions, hyperscaler competition may be shaped as much by regulatory compliance design as by compute capacity and service breadth.
The trend: European regulators are extending competition oversight toward hyperscale cloud infrastructure, treating control of enterprise computing platforms as a platform-power issue.