DMA · designated gatekeepers and real compliance

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is the European Union's most ambitious bet to open the digital ecosystems controlled by big tech. It does not regulate content —that is the DSA's job— but market power: it prohibits a gatekeeper from self-preferencing, requires it to allow interoperability, and bars it from combining its services' data without consent. The incentive to comply is brutal: fines of up to 10% of global turnover, which for Amazon could exceed $60 billion.

This tracker does not narrate the political tug-of-war between Brussels and Silicon Valley. It documents its verifiable acts: who was designated a gatekeeper, for which services, what investigations it faces and what sanctions have been confirmed. The unit of measure is the outcome, not the announcement. Because, just as with GDPR fines, an open investigation is not a final sanction, and a final sanction can end up appealed.

Designating is easy; getting compliance, not so

The pattern the tracker reveals is the same that runs through all European digital regulation: the bottleneck is not in writing the law nor in designating the obligated parties, but in enforcement. The Commission designated the first six gatekeepers in September 2023 relatively quickly; but the first final sanctions did not arrive until April 2025, a year and a half later, and only against two companies. Meanwhile, ByteDance appealed its designation —and lost—, Meta got Facebook Marketplace de-designated, and Alphabet remains under investigation for self-preferencing.

For a competition team, a law firm or a company operating on these gatekeepers' platforms, the useful question is not 'what does the DMA say' but 'which obligation is actually being enforced, against whom and with what outcome'. Apple changed its App Store rules under pressure; Meta redesigned its consent model and rolled out a less-data option in January 2026. Those behavioural changes —not just the fines— are the real metric of whether the DMA works.