Digital Markets Act
The presidency of the Council and the European Parliament signed the Digital Markets Act (DMA) on 14 September 2022.
The DMA aims to ensure a competitive and fair digital sector with a view to promoting innovation, high-quality digital products and services and fairer prices for consumers.
What is the Digital Markets Act (DMA)?
It is a new set of EU rules that will ensure fair competition on digital platforms.
Facts:
- Today, over 10 000 high-growth SMEs online platforms operate in the EU’s digital economy.
- Just a small number of large online platforms, known as the ‘gatekeepers’, have the biggest share of the market.
Gatekeepers are digital platforms:
- with over 45 million active end users each month
- with a turnover of €7.5 billion or more in the last three financial years
Gatekeepers will not be allowed to:
- over-promote their own products
- limit payment possibilities to their own payment method
- re-use personal data collected during one service for the purposes of another service
- impose unfair conditions on business users
- pre-install certain software applications
- restrict business users of platforms
- use certain bundling (selling different items as a package) practices
Companies that do not comply with the new obligations may risk fines of up to 10% of their worldwide turnover or up to 20% in case of repeat offence.
Implementing the European Digital Markets Act will:
- create fairer competition for digital businesses
- generate increased innovation
- provide consumer protection