Digital Markets Act - final legislative text

With the Digital Markets Act, the EU wants to create a properly functioning single market that’s built on fair principles and creates foundations for control and intervention. It also aims to avoid fragmentation of the single market through too many individual national laws. A central role in this law is played by the treatment of platforms known as gatekeepers. A gatekeeper is a platform that, due to its size and influence, has a particularly strong impact on the internal market and cross-border trade. Their strong position has given them the ability to set terms and conditions unilaterally and to the detriment of their commercial users and end users. This behaviour is now to be countered, thus creating fair competition. The regulation is intended to promote innovation, growth and competitiveness, as well as to help smaller companies and start-ups compete with very large providers.

According to the draft law, a gatekeeper mediates between a large number of providers and users. At least 45 million users per month must be using the providers platform, according to the wording of the draft. The Digital Markets Act will also set out the criteria for identifying major online platforms as gatekeepers and give the European Commission the power to conduct market surveys that will make it possible to update obligations for gatekeepers as needed and sanction behaviour that violates the rules.

Article 3 of the Digital Markets Act specifies precisely when a company is to be defined as a gatekeeper and how this is to be done. Subsequently, this is the case when it:

• has a significant impact on the internal market
• provides a central platform service that is a key gateway for business customers to reach its end customers, and
• occupies an established and permanent position in its business or such a position is foreseeable in the near future. 

The core of the draft law is a list of obligations and prohibitions that will apply to those concerned from the time it comes into force. It includes the following points, among others:

• Companies that operate such a platform and meet the requirements are required to notify the Commission.
• Prohibition introduced on ranking own products better than those of third-party providers, e.g. through placements on the website.
• Stricter requirements will also be placed on personalised advertising, requiring gatekeepers to obtain consent from end users.
• Gatekeepers will be subject to a transparency requirement.
• Furthermore, users and end users must be able to completely uninstall preinstalled apps from now on. 

Due to the complexity of the issue, many companies will have to take a closer look at what changes they will face with the new law and how they should deal with them.
Our experts at PwC are on hand to provide advice and support. 

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