Donald Trump will be pleased.
The European Union is reviewing its landmark digital competition law, the Digital Markets Act, which has drawn repeated fire from the U.S. president, who sees it as a nontariff barrier to trade and unfairly targeting American firms.
However, the timing is coincidental rather than deliberate. The European Commission is legally obliged to assess how the law is working and gather public feedback on what should change in advance of its statutory review, due in 2026.
Big Tech companies have pulled no punches when suggesting how the EU executive should tweak the rules, which are designed to prevent companies like Apple, Meta and Google from stifling competition in Europe.
As the Commission heads into a full review, following the closure of its consultation period this week, here are the top regulatory knife-fights to keep an eye on.
Abolish the rules
The opening shot this week came from Apple, which took the opportunity to tell the Commission that the regulation should be abolished, period. “Not surprised,” said Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier in response to Apple’s call to repeal the landmark Big Tech law.
“Apple has simply contested every little bit of the DMA since its entry into application,” said Regnier. “This undermines the company’s narrative of wanting to be fully cooperative with the Commission.”
Google — which has the most services falling under the regulation — has struck an ever-so-slightly more conciliatory tone.
“Time for a reset,” said the company’s competition lead, Oliver Bethell, in a blog post on what the search giant told the Commission. In particular, Google would like to see the Commission take a “soft” approach to enforcement — i.e., back away from fines and towards negotiations — as this would remove the “Sword of Damocles” that hangs over its interactions with the Commission, according to the brief it submitted.
Create a new regulator
The idea of creating an independent agency tasked with enforcing the rules, out of reach of a Commission with multiple competing priorities, has been percolating over the past few months. The fear that DMA enforcement had fallen on the altar of the EU’s trade interests led some academics to advocate for an independent agency.
One possible arrangement would be to create a “European Digital Authority” responsible for directly enforcing laws under the digital rulebook, including the DMA, said Alexandre de Streel, an academic at the University of Namur. His idea is to create “an independent entity, free from political influence, with its own budget and identity.”
He’s not alone. Both Apple and CCIA Europe — the industry body representing American Big Tech firms — have thrown mud at the Commission, accusing it of being biased, unpredictable and politically motivated. CCIA, for its part, thinks an independent agency is the answer to interference woes.
Add cloud and AI
Cloud services were initially intended to be covered by the DMA; however, a formula agreed upon in 2022 specified that only services with more than 45 million end-users would be subject to the rules. This effectively ensured that major providers, such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google, would never have to worry about designation. Now, both MEPs and civil society groups, as well as some national regulators, want to change that threshold so that major U.S. providers would have to respect the rules.
“Leaving out cloud creates a dangerous gap,” said Francisco Mingorance, the head of CISPE, which represents European cloud providers. “[It’s] the backbone of AI, and within a few years, AI won’t just run on the cloud — AI will be the cloud,” he said.
AI itself is a similar story — although it’s more challenging to define what exactly an AI service is. Organizations such as Article 19 and BEUC want to see AI added to the list of services covered by the DMA, a prospect that pro-tech groups vehemently oppose on the grounds of innovation.
Provide better search data
Some Google competitors have eyed the DMA as a means to compete with the tech giant on search — that is, if they are given what they see as the necessary data. At an event earlier this year, a Commission official indicated that opening up more detailed search data, richer than datasets currently required under the DMA, would likely be an issue for “DMA 2.0.” Competitors like DuckDuckGo and Ecosia are eager to see movement here.
Ramp up enforcement
Perhaps the most polarized debate is whether the Commission has gone too hard, or too soft with its enforcement — an issue that is not squarely up for revision.
While Apple sees an EU executive that has singled it out as a target of ‘unfair’ enforcement at the expense of its users, digital rights groups like EDRi and others think that the Commission is not yet being forceful enough.
“While the Commission is working hard to build solid cases against gatekeepers when they are non-compliant, we are concerned at the speed of enforcement,” said BEUC in its submission, seen by POLITICO.
The answer? “Allocate greater resources,” it said.
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