The European Commission has declared its flagship Digital Markets Act (DMA) “fit for purpose” in its first statutory review, claiming it has delivered tangible benefits.
Despite that, the tech industry has pushed back sharply, accusing the EC of producing an overly rosy self-assessment that ignores real harms to consumers, businesses and Europe’s competitiveness.
In its own review, published on April 28, the EC praised regulatory induced benefits such as greater choice of browsers, easier data portability and new interoperability features.
The report highlights new alternative app stores, messaging services and default options for search engines and browsers as evidence of success.
First Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for a Clean, Just and Competitive Transition Teresa Ribera emphasised that the DMA is opening up gatekeeper ecosystems while remaining future-proof for challenges in cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
Ribera also serves as European Commissioner for Competitiveness.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA Europe) went against this evaluation, describing it as “unbalanced” and regretting its failure to properly analyse unintended negative consequences.
While supporting the overarching objectives of the DMA, the CCIA stressed that enforcement has been unpredictable and overly discretionary so far, creating a “procedural black box” that undermines effective compliance.
It noted that the EC acknowledged these problems and was willing to address them, albeit through “targeted measures”.
The CCIA, though, said it was regrettable that the report does not sufficiently analyses unintended negative consequences.
“Far from simply ‘opening up’ markets, current DMA enforcement is already hampering the day-to-day online experience of millions of Europeans. The regulation is also driving up costs for European SMEs who do businesses using services provided by designated ‘gatekeepers’, thereby undermining the EU’s broader competitiveness objectives,” it said.
Daniel Friedlaender, CCIA Europe’s Senior Vice President, stated: “The European Commission has overlooked significant consequences for consumers, businesses and Europe’s competitiveness.
“While highlighting certain positive developments, the DMA review fails to recognise the degraded online experience and potential security risks for users across the EU.
“A more complete assessment is needed to ensure the DMA delivers on its objectives without undermining our competitiveness as a consequence of flawed enforcement,” Friedlaender said.
The International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) was highly critical of the EC, calling the review an exercise in “marking its own homework”.
ICLE scholars argue the EC glosses over documented costs, including fragmented user experiences, reduced security features and higher compliance burdens that ultimately hit European SMEs and innovation.
Dirk Auer, Director of Competition Policy at the ICLE, said an institution that wrote the rules, selected the targets, ran the consultations and now grades the outcome cannot credibly evaluate its own work.
ICLe pointed to independent estimates that suggest DMA-driven changes to Google Search have reduced clicks from Google ads to European hotel websites by about 17.6 per cent and cut direct hotel bookings by as much as 30 per cent — shifting revenue from European hoteliers to a handful of large online travel agents.
Major product launches, including by Big Tech, were also hampered by the European tech regulations.
“The headline claims that Europeans have gained ‘more control’, ‘more choice’, and ‘more interoperability’ all turn on the word ‘more’ — with no serious attempt to weigh those marginal shifts against the vast compliance costs, the degraded products and the missing innovations that Europeans now navigate every day,”,Auer said
“This triumphalist verdict is the precise opposite of the Draghi agenda the EC claims to endorse.”
Former Itally prime minister Mario Draghi’s 2024 report on European competitiveness, laid out an economic policy agenda designed to revitalise the single market and to underpin the bloc’s strategic autonomy.
The Chamber of Progress echoed these concerns, noting limited evidence of genuine consumer uptake for many mandated changes and questioning whether huge engineering costs have delivered meaningful benefits or simply diverted resources from actual product improvements.
