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Commission says DMA is fit, eyes cloud

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The European Commission published its first Digital Markets Act review on Tuesday 28 April, finding the law fit for purpose and naming cloud services and AI as priorities for future enforcement expansion. The consultation received 450-plus responses.

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Key takeaway

The Commission's first DMA review names cloud and AI as the next enforcement priority.

The European Commission published its first Digital Markets Act (DMA) Review Report, filed as COM(2026) 178, on Tuesday 28 April ¹. The report concludes the law is "fit for purpose" and identifies cloud services and artificial intelligence as critical priorities for future enforcement expansion. The consultation drew 450-plus responses.

The review lands on the back of an active enforcement run. the Commission served preliminary DMA measures on Alphabet over Article 6(11) on 16 April , and earlier this year fined Apple €500 million, Meta €200 million under the DMA, and X €120 million under the Digital Services Act . It opened DMA cloud gatekeeper probes against AWS and Azure last autumn , the same probes that triggered the United States' Section 301 counter-response. Naming cloud and AI as the next expansion priorities does not commit the Commission to designating a cloud gatekeeper, but it is the closest thing to a public statement of direction the Commission has issued since the package slipped.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is an EU law that forces large technology companies like Apple, Google, Meta, and Amazon to play by fairer rules, for example by letting users install apps from outside official app stores, or by requiring companies to share data with rivals. On 28 April 2026, the European Commission published its first formal review of the Act, concluding it is working as intended. More than 450 organisations had submitted comments. The Commission also said it wants to extend the Act's powers to cover cloud services and AI companies in future, which would bring more of the technology sector under these rules.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources from Germany, Belgium and 1 more

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Primary parallel: The European Commission's 2020 review of the ePrivacy Directive found it 'fit for purpose' while simultaneously identifying enforcement gaps that prevented it from achieving its stated objectives. The review produced a recast proposal (ePrivacy Regulation) that remained blocked in Council through 2025. The DMA Review follows the same diagnostic path: confirming adequacy while identifying conditions that make adequacy insufficient.

Counter-parallel: The 2022 review of the EU Platform-to-Business Regulation found it fit for purpose and produced no legislative follow-on; the identified gaps were absorbed into the DMA's broader obligations rather than generating a standalone revision. The DMA Review's cloud and AI findings may follow this aggregation route into existing frameworks rather than triggering new legislation.

Consensus view: Friends of Europe's Dharmendra Kanani argues the 'fit for purpose' finding is a political baseline, not an operational verdict: the Review Report explicitly notes that cloud and AI enforcement requires additional Commission investigatory resources that were not in the 2023 DMA staffing plan, meaning the Act is legally adequate but practically under-resourced for the sectors it most needs to cover.

Counter-view: IISS's Franz-Stefan Gady, assessing the national-security implications of cloud enforcement expansion, contends that extending DMA obligations to military and dual-use cloud infrastructure would be counterproductive, because the Act's interoperability requirements would force security-cleared cloud environments to create API access points that European intelligence services consider operationally unsafe.

The 450-plus consultation responses likely include multiple defence-ministry submissions on exactly this point.

Key tension: Whether the Commission can expand DMA enforcement to cover sovereign cloud and AI without creating a carve-out regime that replicates the regulatory fragmentation the Act was designed to eliminate.

Sources:IT Pro·Handelsblatt·Digital Watch Observatory

Mentions:European Commission →Google →IISS →Digital Markets Act →Meta →United States →Section 301 →Alphabet →Azure →Digital Services Act →Apple →Amazon →

First Reported In

Update #4 · CISPE moves first; Brussels misses again

IT Pro· 7 May 2026

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Different Perspectives

Germany (Bundeskartellamt)

Germany's Bundeskartellamt declined to open antitrust proceedings against SAP, the company disclosed on 30 July, in the same fortnight the Commission's EUR 890m DMA fine against Google approached its 21 September compliance deadline. A German software champion cleared domestic scrutiny while an American platform faces enforcement, in the same regulatory season.

United States (USTR)

Washington's Section 301 investigation into EU digital enforcement, opened 24 July, had produced no Federal Register docket as of 4 August, even as Dell and 1,008 Nvidia GB200 NVL4 accelerators sit inside the EU's own sovereignty-branded MeluXina-AI build. The absent docket and the American hardware inside a European sovereignty project pull the same relationship in opposite directions.

UK government

The UK's Sovereign AI vehicle took a nine-figure equity stake in chip startup OLIX on 30 July, its fifth deal since April, while the Cabinet Office's 27 July fact sheet named no accounting officer for the GBP 1.1bn AI Hardware Plan. Whitehall is buying equity rather than capacity, inside a department mid-rename to Business, Innovation, Science and Trade.

Luxembourg government

Luxembourg is covering half of the newly disclosed EUR 80m contract value for MeluXina-AI, EuroHPC's Grand Duchy build, with Dell Technologies confirmed as supplying 1,008 Nvidia GB200 NVL4 accelerators, a hardware detail absent from the earlier project description. The disclosure means Luxembourg's national co-funding buys a facility built on American silicon under a European ownership badge.

European Commission

The Commission activated its Article 101 fining power on 2 August while the Article 70 register it must keep current still showed a 26 September 2025 footer and blank rows for Denmark, Finland and Hungary. It issued no comment, though Article 70 puts the publication duty on Brussels, not member states.

China's Ministry of Commerce

Spokesperson He Yadong said on 16 July that Beijing and the Netherlands should let firms settle the Nexperia dispute through consultation, after a Dutch ministerial visit to Beijing. The conciliatory tone contrasts with the confrontational US trade response to the same fortnight's DMA enforcement.