The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is the EU’s law for reining in the biggest tech platforms, which it calls “gatekeepers”. It came into force on 1 November 2022 and started applying on 2 May 2023. When this article was first written, it was still being finalized. It’s now very much in effect.

Who it covers

A company is designated a gatekeeper if it’s big enough and controls an important route between businesses and consumers. Roughly, that means EU turnover of at least €7.5 billion a year (or a market value of at least €75 billion), at least 45 million monthly users in the EU, and at least 10,000 business users.

The designated gatekeepers are Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Booking, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft. The rules apply to specific services they run, like search, app stores, social networks, messaging apps, browsers and online advertising, rather than everything each company does.

What it requires

Among other things, gatekeepers must:

  • not combine personal data across their services without users’ consent
  • allow apps to be installed from outside their own app stores
  • not rank their own products above competitors’ (no “self-preferencing”)
  • let users uninstall pre-installed apps and change defaults
  • let developers point users to offers outside their app stores
  • make their big messaging services work with smaller ones on request

How it’s enforced

Breaking the rules can cost up to 10% of a company’s worldwide annual turnover, or up to 20% for repeat offenses. The first fines came in April 2025, when the European Commission fined Apple €500 million and Meta €200 million for breaking the rules on steering users to outside offers and on using personal data. Both companies have appealed, and other investigations are ongoing.

Why it matters if you do email marketing

The DMA doesn’t change the rules for sending email. But it does affect the platforms you probably use around it. The limits on combining personal data, and Meta’s “consent or pay” decision in particular, are part of a wider shift that makes ad targeting on the big platforms less precise for EU audiences.

That’s one more reason an email list matters. It’s an audience you built yourself, with consent, and it doesn’t depend on how a gatekeeper decides to handle data.

The EU’s legal basis for the DMA is Article 114 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which covers the smooth running of the single market.

References

  1. [1] Digital Markets Act — digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu
  2. [2] fined Apple €500 million and Meta €200 million — digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu
  3. [3] Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union — eur-lex.europa.eu