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What is the Digital Markets Act (DMA)? - News about SEO and engines

The DMA text (Digital Markets Act), proposed by the European Union, will surely change a certain number of paradigms in the field of search engines by regulating the way in which web players (especially GAFAM) offer functionalities without submitting their own tools and services. See you in the spring to see how Google, in particular, will integrate this new agreement that could have a major impact on the SERPs…

In the course of a movement started in the USA, the European Union has decided to structure its market for “digital” offers (a word used by the European Commission) a little more by dictating clearer rules on “unfair commercial practices that act as guardians in the online platform economy” within a project named DMA (Digital Markets Act). In other words, this text aims to limit, supervise and control the actions of Google & co (therefore GAFAM) in order to allow for a freer and healthier market. Adopted in March 2022, this text will enter into force on 2 May 2023 and, very concretely for the companies concerned, on 6 March 2024.

Why such a rule?

Many consumers, some institutions and the European Commission have found in recent years that certain platforms can create situations of unfair or unequal competition, thus creating what the Commission has called a bottleneck in the digital economy.

Some recall, for example, the mishap of Appgratis, a French startup on its way to the unicorn “killed” overnight by Apple, which believed that this company was making too much movement within the platform. A few months later, Apple launched an offer similar to that of Appgratis… Indeed, as some law professors say, Apple does not apply the law of the United States (or of another country), but the law of Apple.

It is in this context (but also because this same approach had previously been initiated in the US) that the Commission has started a reflection to see how to limit the influence of GAFAM and other platform publishers.

This reflection was carried out in coordination with these GAFAMs, consumer associations, digital market players and the inevitable lobbyists (several tens of thousands) in Brussels. The final text is a compromise between all these actors according to the objectives that the Commission intended to achieve. The ‘technical workshops’ continue as several workshops with stakeholders are planned throughout the year 2023 to determine HOW to apply these regulations.

This semester and no later than 3 July 2023, potential access controllers will have to notify the Commission of their essential platform services, if they meet the thresholds set by the regulation.

Once the complete notification has been received, the Commission will have 2 months to assess whether the company in question meets the thresholds and to appoint it as access controller (by 6 September 2023 at the latest for the latest possible notification). After their designation, the access controllers will have six months, i.e. until 6 March 2024, to comply with the requirements of the regulation of digital markets. It is therefore concretely on 6 March 2024 that the rules to be observed enter into force.


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