7AUG

Brussels keeps Google DMA replies sealed

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12:08UTC

The Commission's public consultation on Google's DMA Article 6(11) search-data obligation closed on Friday 1 May; Brussels has not published the submissions, citing Alphabet's right of reply.

← Back to Riyadh names its next targets; Najran is hit Jump to analysis ↓

ConflictDeveloping

Key takeaway

Brussels has sealed the Google DMA submissions until the binding decision lands on 27 July.

The DMA.100209 public consultation on Google's search-data sharing obligation closed on Friday 1 May ¹. The European Commission has not published the submissions, citing Alphabet's right of reply. The consultation was opened on 16 April on the back of the preliminary measures the Commission served on Alphabet ; the binding decision is due Monday 27 July.

The sealed submissions are the only public window onto how rivals, advertisers and search-data clients argue the Article 6(11) interoperability test. Holding them back until Alphabet replies narrows what civil society and Brussels press can scrutinise before adoption. The 27 July ruling lands three days after the United States Trade Representative's Section 301 final determination on EU digital rules . The order in which those two outputs arrive, and what Washington says about tariff posture in between, is the political weather under which Brussels writes the EU's first cloud-AI gatekeeper remedy.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

One of the EU's rules for large tech companies (the Digital Markets Act) requires Google to share its search data with rival search engines and comparison services, so competitors can improve their products. A public consultation on exactly what data Google must share closed on 1 May 2026. Normally, the Commission publishes consultation responses so the public can see what companies and civil society said. In this case, it has not done so yet, citing Google's legal right to respond to any submissions before they are published. The binding decision on what Google must actually do is due on 27 July 2026. The sealed submissions mean no one outside the Commission currently knows the arguments Google has made in its defence, or what its rivals have demanded.

Source Landscape

This story draws on mixed-leaning sources from United Arab Emirates, United States and 4 more

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United Arab Emirates

France

Iran

LeftRight

Consensus view: EUI (European University Institute) Florence School of Regulation's Pier Luigi Parcu argues the Commission's decision to withhold consultation submissions on the basis of Alphabet's right-of-reply procedural guarantee is legally defensible under DMA Article 34, but sets a disclosure precedent that weakens the Act's credibility as a transparent enforcement regime: the same provision is available to Apple, Amazon, and Meta in their own open proceedings.

Counter-view: US Chamber of Commerce Europe's Marjorie Chorlins contends the sealed consultation is consistent with standard European administrative law and no different from the pre-publication phase of an OFCOM investigation in the UK, and that reading it as a threat to transparency reflects a misunderstanding of how EU administrative procedure works in adversarial enforcement contexts.

Key tension: Whether the Commission's procedural orthodoxy protects enforcement integrity or creates an opacity norm that enables companies to delay disclosure of compliance arguments for months after public consultation closes.

Sources:The National·CNN·Saudi Gazette

Mentions:European Commission →Google →Digital Markets Act →Meta →United States →Section 301 →Alphabet →Washington →Apple →Amazon →European University Institute →DMA.100209 →USTR →

First Reported In

Update #4 · CISPE moves first; Brussels misses again

The National· 7 May 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

DMA clock starts toward six-day AI Act collision

The DMA.100209 consultation closure on 1 May is the next procedural step after the Commission opened the Google search-data consultation on 16 April; the Commission's withholding of submissions advances the file toward the 27 July binding decision.

Occurred 16 Apr 2026

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This Event

Brussels keeps Google DMA replies sealed

The withheld responses are the only public window onto how Commission rivals and clients argue search-data interoperability before the binding decision lands on 27 July.

Different Perspectives

Turkiye

Erdogan followed the Pakistani delegation to Jeddah for an instrument that has not been signed. Ankara's entry widens Saudi Arabia's defence architecture beyond the existing Pakistan pact, adding a second non-Gulf military partner mid-conflict.

Oman

Muscat is the corridor's broker but has published nothing about the arrangement Fars describes on its behalf. The account leaves Oman administering outbound traffic only, a narrower role than the shared route its mediation has rested on since 1979.

Pakistan

Islamabad sent Sharif, Munir and Dar to Jeddah to widen a defence commitment it has honoured in cheaper registers since March, when Dar invoked the Saudi mutual defence pact. Jeddah tests whether that hedge becomes a binding trilateral instrument with Turkiye.

United States

Washington rejected the Majlis Hormuz bill outright while CENTCOM's own tally kept climbing to 49 vessels redirected since 14 July. Both instruments tightened in the same week Trump promised the strait would reopen soon.

Iran

Iran's foreign ministry is selling a phased Hormuz corridor through Oman and denying any percentage cargo tariff, while its own Majlis is legislating fines to 20% and a bar on Israeli-linked cargo. The two accounts, from the same government, do not agree with each other.

Saudi Arabia

Riyadh published a target forecast, not an attribution, for the campaign it says the Najran strike previewed. That keeps an Article 51 case available while it formalises a trilateral defence architecture with Pakistan and Turkiye.