The EU's Digital Markets Act came into force in March 2024, designating several large online platforms as "gatekeepers" — companies whose market position gives them structural advantages that require specific rules to prevent abuse. The Commission has now issued its first formal findings of non-compliance.
Which companies and what findings
The findings so far relate to obligations around interoperability, self-preferencing in search results, and consent requirements for combining personal data across services. The companies subject to the current proceedings are among those designated as gatekeepers in the initial round — the Commission has not named all parties in final decisions, and some proceedings remain ongoing.
Non-compliance findings under the DMA can result in fines of up to 10% of a company's global annual turnover, rising to 20% for repeat infringements. For the largest platforms, those figures run to tens of billions of euros, though it is unlikely initial penalties will reach those maximums. The Commission's stated goal is behavioural change, not revenue generation.
What gatekeepers must do differently
The DMA's core obligations include: allowing users to uninstall pre-installed apps, not ranking a gatekeeper's own services more prominently than competitors in search results, giving business users access to performance data about their own activity on the platform, and obtaining meaningful consent before combining data across different services. The non-compliance findings relate to the Commission's assessment that some of these obligations have not been implemented adequately.
Why this matters beyond the companies involved
The DMA is the EU's primary tool for regulating structural market power in digital markets, and how the Commission enforces it in these first cases will set precedents. If early enforcement is seen as procedurally weak or easily appealed, the law's deterrent effect will be limited. If the Commission pursues remedies seriously, it will test whether the DMA's legal architecture holds up under challenge in the EU courts.
For businesses operating on these platforms — including many Polish SMEs that rely on marketplace and advertising tools — the practical question is whether the DMA will produce meaningful changes in how they access customers and data, or whether it will largely play out as a legal battle between regulators and large platform operators.
What to watch
The Commission is expected to issue formal decisions in several proceedings before the end of 2025. Appeals to the Court of Justice of the EU are likely. The DMA also includes a provision for "systemic non-compliance" investigations that can result in structural remedies — potentially including forced divestiture — though that is a longer and more uncertain path.