The European Union is pushing its Digital Markets Act into new territory, with two of America’s largest cloud computing companies now in its sights.
In June, the European Commission announced its preliminary position that Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure should be designated as “gatekeepers” under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). There is one particularly important detail: neither company meets the law’s normal quantitative thresholds for gatekeeper status.
Instead, European regulators are relying on Article 3(8) of the DMA, which allows the Commission to designate companies that fall below the numerical thresholds if regulators determine they nevertheless occupy a sufficiently important position in the European market.
As Market Institute Senior Fellow Norm Singleton explains in a new RealClearMarkets
“The EUC concedes that AWS and Azure do not meet the DMA’s quantitative thresholds for gatekeeper designation, so the EUC is relying on Article 3(8).”