EU Digital Markets Act

Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper is a company that offers one or more of the following services

• online brokerage services

• online search engines

• Online social networking services

• video sharing platform services

• number-independent interpersonal communication services

• operating systems

• web browsers

• virtual assistants

• cloud computing services

• online advertising services

if the company at the same time (cumulatively)

• has significant influence on the internal market and

• provides a central platform service that serves as an important gateway for business users to reach end users and

• has a stable and permanent position in its activities or it is foreseeable that it will have such a position in the near future.

The latter requirements are assumed to be met if, among other things, an annual turnover of EUR 7.5 billion or more has been achieved in each of the last three years.

Gatekeepers are therefore primarily the large Internet service providers.

If the above requirements are met, the company is designated as a gatekeeper (or gatekeeper in the German language version) by means of a designation decision.

Prohibitions for gatekeepers

If a company is designated as a gatekeeper, it is prohibited from certain types of behavior that are often reminiscent of events from the recent past, for example:

• The first situation to be mentioned is one that is very reminiscent of the Facebook / Meta and WhatsApp situation: it should be prohibited for a gatekeeper to merge personal data from different services unless consent has been given. If consent is refused, it may not be requested again within one year.

• The gatekeeper may not prohibit commercial customers from offering their services or goods on other platforms under different conditions.

• The gatekeeper may not prohibit end customers from using the software of commercial companies if the end customer and the commercial company have concluded their contract outside the gatekeeper's platform. This is reminiscent of the situation of contracts concluded via app marketplaces and in-app purchases as opposed to contracts concluded via a web browser.

• Furthermore, a gatekeeper may not prescribe the use of certain payment methods or channels. This is also reminiscent of the situation of commission-based transactions in app marketplaces, which are based on the use of a specific payment interface.

• Furthermore, a gatekeeper must provide information about the status of placed advertisements free of charge on a daily basis.

• A gatekeeper may also not use any data that is not publicly accessible in order to compete with commercial users. This is reminiscent of the discussion on the alleged use of data on merchants on Amazon.

• Any client software installed by a gatekeeper must be easy to uninstall from end devices.

Sanctions

If gatekeepers violate their obligations, fines of up to 10% or even 20% of annual global turnover can be imposed.

This article is part of the overview of the current changes to the EU data strategy and the New Legislative Framework.