Here are the first 7 potential “Gatekeepers” under the EU Digital Markets Act
ec.europa.eu
ec.europa.eu
Alphabet Amazon Apple ByteDance Meta Microsoft Samsung
Requirements:
They will no longer be able to lock in users in their ecosystem.
They will no longer be able to decide which apps you need to have pre-installed on your devices; which app store you have to use.
They will not be able to “self-preference”: exploiting the advantage of being the gatekeeper by treating their own products and services more favorably.
Their messaging apps will have to interoperate with others.
> 3. The gatekeeper shall ensure that the obligations of Articles 5, 6 and 7 are fully and effectively complied with.
> 4. The gatekeeper shall not engage in any behaviour that undermines effective compliance with the obligations of Articles 5, 6 and 7 regardless of whether that behaviour is of a contractual, commercial or technical nature, or of any other nature, or consists in the use of behavioural techniques or interface design.
> 6. The gatekeeper shall not degrade the conditions or quality of any of the core platform services provided to business users or end users who avail themselves of the rights or choices laid down in Articles 5, 6 and 7, or make the exercise of those rights or choices unduly difficult, including by offering choices to the end-user in a non-neutral manner, or by subverting end users’ or business users' autonomy, decision-making, or free choice via the structure, design, function or manner of operation of a user interface or a part thereof.
> 7. Where the gatekeeper circumvents or attempts to circumvent any of the obligations in Article 5, 6, or 7 in a manner described in paragraphs 4, 5 and 6 of this Article, the Commission may open proceedings pursuant to Article 20 and adopt an implementing act referred to in Article 8(2) in order to specify the measures that the gatekeeper is to implement.
While famously keen on having social safety nets, its politics is generally center-right and the economy cannot be described as anything else than a market economy.
The unusual circumstances are that for a major and growing in importance sector (digital services) it is almost entirely relying on US companies for software and Asian companies for hardware.
The result is that the EU is forced to either accept the abysmal regulatory standards of these other regions or try to throw its weight around and hope for the best.
The positive end games are either US politicians growing up a spine and ensuring this vital sector is not strangled by oligopolies or the EU developing its own services (and fast).
Neither is very likely, so grab you pop corn...
What will be the consequences of non-compliance?
Fines
of up to 10% of the company’s total worldwide annual turnover, or up to 20% in the event of repeated infringements
of up to 5% of the average daily turnover
In case of systematic infringements of the DMA obligations by gatekeepers, additional remedies may be imposed on the gatekeepers after a market investigation. Such remedies will need to be proportionate to the offence committed. If necessary and as a last resort option, non-financial remedies can be imposed. These can include behavioural and structural remedies, e.g. the divestiture of (parts of) a business.I don't see how it would affect anything going on in non-backdoored apps.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
As for E2E encryption, I think Matrix has done a good write-up on this [1]. Also right after the interoperable section [0] is where the DMA says E2EE "shall be preserved across the interoperable services."
[0] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
[1] https://matrix.org/blog/2022/03/29/how-do-you-implement-inte...
The answer is likely that the firm in charge of the site themselves can't make sense of GDPR, and included the prompt by default like everyone else does, making the whole thing pointless and leading to nothing but visual pollution.
> How do we use cookies?
> European Commission websites mostly use “first-party cookies”. These are cookies set and controlled by the Commission, not by any external organisation.
> However, to view some of our pages, you will have to accept cookies from external organisations.
> The 3 types of first-party cookie we use are to:
> store visitor preferences > make our websites operational > gather analytics data (about user behaviour)
and below :
> Analytics cookies
> We use these purely for internal research on how we can improve the service we provide for all our users.
> The cookies simply assess how you interact with our website – as an anonymous user (the data gathered does not identify you personally).
> Also, this data is not shared with any third parties or used for any other purpose. The anonymised statistics could be shared with contractors working on communication projects under contractual agreement with the Commission.
> However, you are free to refuse these types of cookies – either via the cookie banner you’ll see on the first page you visit or at Europa Analytics.
So they understood GDPR very well, because they are requiring consent for *non essential cookies* and they are *making the "no" as easy to click on as the "yes"*
What happens if a gatekeeper ignores the rules?
To ensure the effectiveness of the new rules, the possibility of sanctions for non-compliance with the obligations is foreseen.
If a gatekeeper does not comply with the rules, the Commission can impose fines of up to 10% of the company's total worldwide annual turnover or 20% in the event of repeated infringements and periodic penalty payments of up to 5% of the company's total worldwide daily turnover.
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/QANDA_...
Will private damages be available to those harmed by gatekeeper conduct?
The DMA is a Regulation, containing precise obligations and prohibitions for the gatekeepers in scope, which can be enforced directly in national courts. This will facilitate direct actions for damages by those harmed by the conduct of non-complying gatekeepers.