The Digital Markets Act: two years after, where do we stand? Some reflections on DMA achievements and future challenges

In a couple of weeks, the European Commission is expected to publish a long-awaited report on the Digital Markets Act (DMA).1 In accordance with Article 53 DMA, the Commission has to report to the Council and the European Parliament by 3rd May 2026 on whether the DMA has achieved its objectives, in terms of strengthened contestability and fairness in digital markets. Secondly, the Commission has to suggest (if needed) any legislative modifications to the lists of obligations under Articles 5, 6, and 7 of the DMA, and to the list of Core Platform Services (CPSs) under Article 2.

Following the entry into force of the DMA obligations, the gatekeepers cannot impose on business users a number of unfair contractual clauses (eg no-challenge clauses, Article 5.6). In terms of fairness, the DMA also improves the platform transparency, especially in relation to online advertising (Article 5.9 and Article 5.10). When it comes to contestability, the DMA obligations aim at preventing discriminatory behaviours by the gatekeeper (ie self-preferencing in ranking of products, Article 6.5), as well as removing the preferential access to customers’ data enjoyed by the gatekeeper (Article 5.2, Article 6.2 and Article 6.9). In addition, the DMA decreases users’ lock-in into the platform ecosystem, by fostering the ability of end users ‘to switch’ to alternative services provided by third parties (eg Articles 6.4, 6.6, and 6.10) and allowing business users to steer consumers outside of the platform ecosystem (Articles 5.4 and 5.7). Finally, by fostering interoperability (Articles 6.7 and 7), the DMA empowers third parties to release new software and hardware compatible with the gatekeeper’s products without re-creating the entire network from scratch.

The DMA formally entered into force in November 2022, but its obligations are de facto applicable only since March 2024, when Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Microsoft ByteDance and Amazon presented their first DMA compliance reports.2 In between, the ‘large’ platforms had to notify fulfilment of the DMA quantitative thresholds, the Commission had to evaluate the notifications and designate the gatekeepers, and the gatekeepers had 6 months to implement the DMA obligations. These inevitable procedural steps have de facto ‘squeezed’ the effective period for DMA enforcement, making the incoming evaluation a difficult task for the Commission.

The article provides some reflections on the results so far achieved by the DMA, pointing out the difficulties faced by the Commission in the current evaluation process (Section II), examines the DMA enforcement by the Commission in the past two years, looking at the difficult choice faced by the Commission between non-compliance and specification proceedings (Section III) and at the future impact of the judicial review by the EU Court of Justice on the DMA enforcement (Section IV).