Key Points:
- The European Commission reviewed the Digital Markets Act on April 28 and officially declared the new law fit for purpose.
- Regulators classified seven tech companies as gatekeepers based on a €75 billion market value and 45 million monthly users.
- The act imposes fines of up to 10% of total revenue, resulting in a €500 million fine for Apple in 2025.
- Officials plan to crack down on poor compliance and expand the rules to cover artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
On April 28, the European Commission finished its first official review of the Digital Markets Act. Regulators declared the sweeping tech law fit for purpose and highlighted its positive impact on regular consumers and market competition. Members of the European Parliament now want regulators to enforce the rules much more quickly to counter pushback from large tech companies. The law aims to make online spaces fairer by restricting the massive power of dominant internet platforms.
The Commission gathered 450 public contributions between July and September 2025 to evaluate the law. Most people gave positive feedback, but many asked the government to implement the rules better. Andreas Schwab, a Member of the European Parliament, agreed with the review but warned regulators that digital markets change incredibly fast. He urged officials to keep updating the framework to address new technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
The law targets companies it calls gatekeepers. A company gets this label if it makes €7.5 billion in annual revenue over three years, holds a market value of €75 billion, and reaches at least 45 million users every month. Between 2023 and 2025, regulators placed seven companies into this group: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft, and Booking. The act requires these platforms to allow users to uninstall default apps, use third-party app stores, and stop tracking user activity for advertising without clear consent.
Companies that break these strict rules face massive financial penalties. Regulators can impose a fine equal to 10% of a company’s total annual global revenue if it breaks the rules again; that fine increases to 20%. The Commission already flexed this power in 2025 when it fined Apple €500 million and penalized Meta €200 million. Last month, on April 16, regulators also ordered Google to share its search data with third-party competitors.
The law faces heavy criticism from tech industry representatives. Maria Teresa Stecher works as a senior policy manager at the Computer and Communication Industry Association in Brussels. Her group represents four of the major gatekeepers. Stecher argued that the law unfairly targets specific companies and creates a heavy-handed, technical nightmare. She claimed the new rules actually make internet navigation much harder for users and hurt smaller businesses. Stecher estimated that smaller companies currently lose between €8 billion and €114 billion every year because they rely so heavily on the major platforms that now face heavy restrictions.
Consumer advocates strongly disagree with the tech lobbyists. Agustin Reyna directs the consumer rights group BEUC. He pointed out that consumers finally have real choices online. People can now select their preferred web browser on Apple devices through a simple choice screen. Users can also easily transfer their personal data between different platforms. Small messaging startups, such as the Latvian company BirdChat, can now connect their users directly with people on massive apps like WhatsApp.
Despite these early wins, regulators admit the law suffers from practical problems. The Commission noted that large tech companies implement changes very slowly. Some platforms redesigned their apps to comply with the law technically, but they hid alternative options deep in the settings menus. Reyna noted that tech giants use tricky design techniques to discourage people from switching apps and enjoying their new digital rights.
The original lawmakers also failed to predict the current boom in artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Regulators still do not know exactly how to apply the new rules to smart chatbots and virtual assistants. Officials worry that dominant firms will simply build private artificial intelligence services straight into their operating systems to bypass the rules. Cloud computing also escapes the strictest controls right now, leaving small businesses trapped with single providers like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure.
To fix these problems, the European Commission plans to launch stricter enforcement actions. Regulators will open more formal investigations and issue specific orders that tell companies exactly how they must comply. The government also launched a new investigation to see if major cloud computing services should officially become gatekeepers. Officials will write new rules to ensure consumers can easily change their default artificial intelligence tools on their smartphones and computers.
These upcoming changes aim to make everyday digital services much more flexible for citizens. Users will soon find it much easier to control their personal data and pick their favorite applications. Small software companies will finally get a fair chance to compete against massive built-in services. Meanwhile, the world’s biggest tech firms will face even tougher government oversight as Europe refuses to let them control the digital economy.
