The European Council and the European Parliament have reached a provisional political agreement on the Digital Markets Act (DMA), according to a press release on March 25. The Digital Markets Act defines platforms in the EU that have at least 7.5 billion euros in turnover or a market valuation of 75 billion euros, and at least 45 million monthly end users, as “gatekeepers”. The Act looks to impose compliance requirements that “aims to ensure that no large online platform that acts as a ‘gatekeeper’ for a large number of users abuses its position to the detriment of companies wishing to access such users,” the press release said. In December 2020, the European Commission had presented a digital services package comprising the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA). Negotiations on the Acts started on November 25 last year. The legislation will apply to companies such as Amazon, Facebook parent Meta, and Google parent Alphabet, among others. Companies such as Amazon and Google have been targets of antitrust investigations, but the cases have been dragging out for years in courts and have had little impact on the companies' behaviour, according to Bloomberg. Who are gatekeepers? Apart from having 45 million monthly end users, platforms should also have 10,000 business users in the EU to qualify as a 'gatekeeper'. “The platform must also control one or more core platform services in at least three member states. These core platform services include marketplaces and app stores, search engines, social networking, cloud services,…
