As Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft comply with the EU's DMA before March 7, experts are skeptical its rules will have the desired effect
This week is the deadline for large online platforms to comply with new EU regulations on competition. Too little too late, say some
Context & Ripple Effects
The DMA moved from legislative negotiation to implementation after major US platforms failed to win substantial changes and shifted toward compliance in 2022. Microsoft and Google later declined to contest their gatekeeper designations, narrowing the fight to how the rules would be applied rather than whether they applied at all.
The deadline is therefore an early test of whether formal obligations can materially reduce platform gatekeepers’ control over market access. Skepticism centers on implementation: compliance filings alone do not establish that developers or users gain meaningful alternatives.
First-order effects
- Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft must operationalize DMA compliance across their designated services, exposing their product and commercial choices to immediate regulatory scrutiny.
- The Commission’s assessment becomes the decisive next step; later formal probes into Apple, Google and Meta’s DMA practices illustrate how quickly compliance claims can become enforcement cases.
Second-order effects
- App developers, advertisers and other business users gain a new basis to challenge platform terms, but the practical value depends on whether remedies change the routes through which users discover, pay for or leave services.
- Gatekeepers are incentivized to design compliance measures that preserve existing product integration and revenue models, setting up continued disputes over whether nominal choice produces contestable access.
Third-order effects
- The DMA shifts EU competition policy toward ongoing supervision of platform conduct rather than relying only on long antitrust cases; its credibility will rest on enforcement against evasive or insufficient implementation.
- If enforcement is sustained, the rules could establish interface-level obligations as a durable constraint on gatekeeper leverage—though skepticism is warranted until implementation produces observable changes for dependent businesses and users.
The trend: The DMA is part of a broader move from retrospective antitrust enforcement toward ex ante rules governing how dominant digital platforms structure access and choice.