The Digital Markets Act and the impact on Small and Medium Enterprises

1. Introduction

In recent years, there has been growing concern about the risks created by the excessive concentration of economic power in the hands of a limited number of digital platforms, and institutions have realized that the traditional antitrust approach is not sufficient to grasp the new characteristics of digital gatekeepers. To mention some, the significant degree of dependence of business users and end users on some platforms makes it easier for a leading platform to consolidate its position as a dominant or incumbent firm in the market; in addition to this, the strong network effects that are characteristic of some platforms like social media or search engines represent an almost impassable barrier to entry for potential competitors.

Considering the factors mentioned above, the European Union found its response to this growing concern in the Digital Markets Act, a hybrid form of regulation enacted in 2022, to limit and regulate the growing power of digital platforms and identify their abusive and unfair practices.

The DMA was perceived as a form of ex-ante regulation, based on art. 114 TFEU, but that should be interpreted differently from EU antitrust rules, following the indications given by the Commission. In essence, the DMA provided the indications to identify digital gatekeepers and the practices and conduct they must abstain from, with the objective of protecting fairness and contestability of digital markets. As of April 2026, the European Commission published the first DMA review report, where it is stated that, although the Act and its consequences are moving in the right direction, “there is a need for rigorous supervision, continued regulatory dialogue in combination with guidance from the Commission”.[1]

Rather than analyzing the technical legal characteristics of the DMA, this report will focus on the positive and negative effects caused by it, with a special focus on small and medium enterprises in the single market. As stated in the report from Copenhagen Business School on the Economic Impact of the Digital Markets Act on European Businesses, the effects of the provisions introduced by the act lead to real economic losses for several kinds of businesses in the single market, including SMEs. [2]

On the other hand, landmark cases initiated or developed under the DMA framework, such as the anti-steering action against Apple, have increased market transparency to the benefit of consumers and smaller businesses (especially SMEs). This regulatory intervention prevents gatekeepers from imposing restrictive pricing policies on firms in a downstream market that rely heavily on a single dominant platform for market access. [3]

In conclusion, the CBS report and the Apple Store case are useful examples to demonstrate the double-edged sword essence of the DMA and its consequences, and in this report this matter will be studied, especially taking into account the fact that the DMA simultaneously lowers certain barriers to competition while imposing new costs of adaptation, and these effects are not evenly distributed across the SME population.

2. The Digital Markets Act: Economic Rationale and Implications

2.1. Digital gatekeepers and the Economics of Digital Markets

The DMA was conceived as a new form of regulation to face the peculiar characteristics of the digital markets, such as high economies of scale, significant network effects, and high switching costs.

Digital platforms are multi-sided markets, because they connect different groups of users with a common platform created by an intermediary, allowing the interaction between the two or more groups (e.g. customers, advertisers, sellers). Multi-sided platforms value increase thanks to membership externality: the value that one group of users derives from the platform increases with the number of participants on the other side of the market. For example, a larger number of sellers makes a marketplace more attractive to consumers, while a growing consumer base increases the incentives for new sellers to join the platform. For this reason, the calculation of the profits and marginal costs of a digital platform is more complicated and is therefore harder to assess dominance under traditional antitrust law.

In addition to membership externality, digital markets are characterized by network effects, because each additional user increases the value of the platform for existing users on the same side of the market. This is the reason why the concept of network effects is extremely important in the case of the digital economy, and why digital markets tend to have high degrees of concentration by nature.[4]

In addition to network effects, digital platforms also benefit from substantial economies of scale. Unlike traditional firms, where serving additional customers generally requires proportionally higher production costs, digital platforms are characterized by extremely low marginal costs once the main infrastructure has been developed. The cost of providing a digital service to one additional user is often close to zero, allowing platforms to expand rapidly while continuously reducing their average costs. This enables incumbent platforms to spread their fixed costs to over millions of users, making it considerably more difficult for smaller competitors to be as efficient.

Scale generates another important competitive advantage, which is access to data. As the number of users increases, digital platforms collect increasingly large volumes of consumer data that can be used to improve algorithms, personalize services, optimize advertising, and develop new products. Better services attract more users, generating additional data and reinforcing the platform’s competitive position. This self-reinforcing mechanism creates a feedback loop in which scale, data, and quality reinforce one another, making entry into digital markets more difficult.[5]

At the same time, users often face significant switching costs when moving from one platform to another. These costs are not necessarily monetary but may include the loss of contacts, accumulated social media presence, purchased applications, stored data, or familiarity with the functionalities of a certain platform. Such switching costs generate lock-in effects, that cause both consumers and business users to remain faithful to a platform despite the existence of alternatives. For SMEs, this dependence may be even stronger, as many businesses rely heavily on a single platform for customer acquisition, online visibility, advertising, or also app distribution.

Considering network effects, economies of scale, data advantages and switching costs, it is easy to show that they create market structures that naturally favor concentration and can reinforce the dominance of gatekeepers over time. Under these conditions, traditional competition law has often proved insufficient, and it often could not grasp the new characteristics of these emerging markets. Since EU antitrust rules generally intervene ex post, after anti-competitive conduct has occurred, enforcement procedures may take several years to conclude. In rapidly evolving digital markets, however, competitive harm may become irreversible, due to the effects listed before, before a final decision is adopted. This bundle of factors motivated the European Union to complement traditional competition law with an ex ante regulatory framework, culminating in the adoption of the Digital Markets Act.

2.2. The Digital Markets Act: Objectives and Main Mechanisms

The enactment of Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 marks a fundamental shift in European digital competition policy. Traditional EU competition policy, based on Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), operates through an ex-post enforcement mechanism. Under this classical mechanism, regulatory authorities investigate anti-competitive behavior, such as cartel agreements or abuses of dominant market position, only after the conduct has occurred and market distortion has materialized. However, as experience in digital markets has shown to European courts and policymakers (e.g., prolonged antitrust investigations into major search and e-commerce platforms), ex-post remedies frequently proved too slow and structurally unable to address fast-moving digital dynamics. The presence of extreme direct and indirect network effects, high switching costs, and severe multi-sided economies of scale often resulted in “tipping” markets, where an incumbent platform consolidates a monopolistic or oligopolistic bottleneck before judicial remedies can be enforced.

To overcome these structural limitations, the European legislature established the DMA as an ex-ante regulatory regime built upon Article 114 TFEU (Internal Market approximation). Rather than requiring proof of a dominant position and a case-by-case demonstration of market abuse under traditional antitrust standards, the DMA establishes a set of actionable, pre-defined behavioral rules (“do’s and don’ts”) directly binding on entities designated as “gatekeepers”. The primary objectives underlying this regulatory structure are two:

1. Contestability: Ensuring that digital markets remain open to entry and expansion by alternative operators, including innovative startups and Small and Medium Enterprises, by systematically removing artificial entry barriers and path-dependencies established by dominant platforms.
2. Fairness: Preventing gatekeepers from exploiting their structural positioning to extract unearned economic rents, imposing unbalanced contractual terms, or leverage user data to disadvantage business users that depend on their infrastructure.

The operational application of the DMA is tightly circumscribed by two structural concepts defined in Articles 2 and 3 of the Regulation: Core Platform Services (CPS) and Gatekeeper Status.

Under Article 2(2), the DMA identifies ten specific categories of digital services that function as crucial commercial gateways:

• Online intermediation services (e.g., e-commerce marketplaces, app stores);
• Online search engines;
• Online social networking services;
• Video-sharing platform services;
• Number-independent interpersonal communications services (messaging apps);
• Operating systems;
• Web browsers;
• Virtual assistants;
• Cloud computing services;
• Online advertising services provided in connection with any of the above.

Under Article 3(1), a firm providing one or more CPS is designated as a “gatekeeper” if it meets three cumulative structural requirements, supported by concrete quantitative rebuttable presumptions under Article 3(2):

1. Significant Impact on the Internal Market;
2. Essential Gateway for Business Users;
3. Entrenched and Durable Position.

By utilizing these objective metric thresholds, the DMA establishes a targeted regulatory focus, insulating SMEs and emerging scale-ups from direct obligations while constraining the structural conduct of systemic tech firms.

Once designated, gatekeepers must comply with the affirmative duties and negative prohibitions codified in Articles 5 and 6 of the Regulation. These articles form the substantive engine of the DMA and directly impact the operational environment for SMEs.

Article 5 mandates obligations that apply automatically without requiring complex regulatory specification or administrative dialog:

• Data Combining and Cross-Use (Article 5(2));
• Anti-Steering Prohibitions (Article 5(4));
• Unbundling and Anti-Tying (Article 5(8)).

Article 6 sets forth obligations designed to address complex technical dynamics, allowing the European Commission to specify implementation measures where appropriate:

• Prohibition of Self-Preferencing (Article 6(5));
• Real-Time Data Access and Portability (Articles 6(9) & 6(10));
• Hardware and Software Interoperability (Article 6(7)).

Unlike the decentralized enforcement framework of EU competition law, the Digital Markets Act establishes a centralized enforcement model under the exclusive authority of the European Commission. This centralized approach is intended to ensure swift and consistent implementation across all Member States while preventing legal fragmentation. To guarantee compliance, the DMA equips the Commission with several powerful enforcement tools. Under Article 30, the Commission may impose financial fines of up to 10% of a gatekeeper’s total worldwide turnover in the preceding financial year for an initial infringement, with penalties increasing to as much as 20% of global turnover in cases of repeated non-compliance within an eight-year period. In addition, Article 31 authorizes periodic penalty payments of up to 5% of the gatekeeper’s average daily worldwide turnover to compel compliance with Commission decisions or interim measures. Finally, Article 18 provides for structural remedies in cases of systematic non-compliance, defined as at least three infringements within five years. In such circumstances, the Commission may impose behavioral or behavioral-structural remedies, including requiring the divestiture of specific business units or platform assets.[6]

2.3. Opportunities and Costs for SMEs

While the primary ambition of Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 is to establish a contestable and fair digital environment, its practical implementation operates as a double-edged sword for European Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The regulation fundamentally alters the operational dynamics between dominant platforms, designated as gatekeepers, and the millions of business users that depend on them for market access[7]. On one side, the regulatory architecture actively destructures historical bottlenecks, offering smaller market participants unprecedented operational autonomy, direct access to end-consumers, and protection against predatory practices. On the other side, the forced restructuring of platform architectures and data flows introduces immediate compliance friction, degraded functional efficiency, and indirect commercial costs that are disproportionately felt across the SME ecosystem.

2.3.1. Opportunities for SMEs: Contestability, Autonomy, and Multi-Homing

On the opportunity side, the DMA’s obligations directly target the structural dependencies and asymmetry of bargaining power that previously constrained SME expansion within gatekeeper ecosystems. Prior to this intervention, gatekeepers leveraged their bottleneck positions to extract economic rents and lock in both business users and end-consumers. The DMA addresses these market failures through targeted ex-ante prohibitions that create a more contestable playing field.

The prohibition of anti-steering clauses under Article 5(4) represents perhaps the most immediate structural relief for business users. Historically, dominant marketplaces and app distribution platforms prohibited business users from informing consumers about alternative, less expensive purchasing channels outside the platform, enforcing compliance through restrictive contractual terms and mandatory integrated payment systems. By invalidating these restrictions, Article 5(4) enables SMEs to design flexible, multi-channel distribution strategies. Businesses can now direct customers to proprietary websites or alternative digital storefronts where lower transaction fees apply, thereby promoting direct subscriptions, improving profit margins, and bypassing fee structures that historically extracted up to 30% of top-line revenues.[8]

Equally positive are the data access and portability mandates articulated in Articles 6(9) and 6(10). Digital gatekeepers have long benefited from data aggregation externalities, collecting vast amounts of user and operational data generated by third-party sellers to optimize their own ecosystems while denying SMEs access to those same insights. Under Article 6(10), business users gain free, real-time access to aggregated and non-aggregated data generated through their activity on core platform services. Furthermore, Article 6(9) mandates effective data portability for end-users and business users alike. These provisions significantly lower switching costs, preventing gatekeepers from holding customer records hostage and enabling SMEs to:

• Reduce Customer Lock-in: Port customer profiles and transaction histories seamlessly to proprietary customer relationship management (CRM) systems or competing platforms.
• Enhance Multi-Homing: Deploy cross-platform commercial strategies without losing historical performance metrics or reputation indicators built on a single platform.
• Mitigate Asymmetrical Information: Gain visibility into customer behavior, demand patterns, and conversion metrics, fostering independent product innovation and targeted service offerings.[9]

2.3.2. Costs and Operational Friction: Efficiency Losses and Intermediary Shift

Despite these structural advancements in market fairness, empirical observations and economic analysis reveal significant operational disruption and unexpected adaptation costs for the SME sector. The fundamental friction stems from a significant trade-off: platform integration, despite its potential for abusive practices, historically provided substantial transaction-cost reductions and economies of scale for smaller entities that lacked the capital to construct proprietary software, advertising networks, or distribution channels.[10] As gatekeepers modify their system architectures to ensure compliance, these integrated efficiency gains are frequently cancelled.

The most severe commercial disruption arises from the restrictions on cross-service data combining under Article 5(2). While designed to protect consumer privacy and limit unfair competitive advantages, prohibiting gatekeepers from merging personal data across core platform services without explicit user consent fundamentally alters the digital advertising landscape. SMEs rarely possess the resources or baseline traffic required to build proprietary data profiles for target audiences; instead, they rely heavily on hyper-targeted niche advertising offered by major digital platforms to optimize limited marketing budgets. The decline in ad-targeting precision has led to lower conversion rates and a sharp rise in Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC), forcing SMEs to spend significantly more to achieve their historical customer reach.

Furthermore, the strict enforcement of Article 6(5) regarding self-preferencing has led to the decoupling of integrated digital features, such as embedded maps, direct booking modules, or interactive product panels within search engine results pages. While intended to prevent gatekeepers from promoting their own vertical platforms, this structural unbundling removes direct conversion shortcuts for local merchants, specialty retailers, and hospitality providers. Instead of directing organic search traffic straight to individual SME storefronts, search results now frequently redirect users to traditional Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), global aggregators, or multi-directory portals, re-subjecting smaller businesses to substantial commission fees.[11]

The quantitative dimensions of these unexpected regulatory trade-offs are several. Empirical findings by Copenhagen Business School and LAMA Economic Research highlight the macroeconomic and microeconomic scale of these efficiency shocks across European service industries, projecting downside revenue risks ranging from €8.5 billion up to €114 billion, which corresponds to a potential sectoral turnover contraction of up to 0.64%. The report attributes these losses directly to the friction introduced into daily business operations:

• Digital Advertising Efficiency Decline: Reduced ad targeting capabilities and degraded search engine integration account for aggregate revenue losses between €8.5 billion and €114 billion across the EU economy.
• Labor Productivity Impact: The aggregate reduction in platform integration and utility corresponds to an estimated annual loss in turnover per employee of up to €1,122 across affected service sectors.
• Cost Internalization and Pass-Through: Compliance implementation costs and architectural adjustments incurred by gatekeepers are frequently passed down to business users via updated platform fee structures, reduced organic visibility, or higher baseline service charges.[12]

Ultimately, these dynamics highlight an inherent asymmetry in how regulatory adjustments affect the market. While large enterprises possess the financial and technical capabilities to build multi-platform architectures, leverage real-time data access, and optimize direct sales channels, traditional SMEs often absorb the negative side-effects, including higher customer acquisition costs, lost organic visibility, and increased operational complexity, without possessing the scale necessary to capitalize on the new rights provided by the Digital Markets Act.

2.4. Why the Effects Differ Across SMEs: Structural Asymmetries and Divergent Adaptation Capacities

The impact of Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 across European small and medium-sized enterprises is far from uniform. While ex-ante platform regulation aims to level the playing field by limiting gatekeeper power, microeconomic theory and empirical evidence indicate that compliance adjustments generate separate winners and losers within the SME ecosystem. This divergence arises from fundamental differences in firm capabilities, digital maturity, data dependency, and position within digital value chains. The effects are not the same for all businesses, because separating core platform services and limiting the use of data across services can affect firms differently depending on their size, structure, and level of strategic independence.

A primary factor explaining this divergence is the structural divide between digitally native firms and traditional SMEs. Digitally native companies, such as software developers and digital-first service providers, possess the technical infrastructure and human capital required to exploit the contestability mechanisms provided by Articles 5 and 6 of the DMA. By leveraging anti-steering protections (Art. 5.4) and enhanced data portability rights (Art. 6.9), tech-enabled SMEs can bypass proprietary payment systems, establish direct distribution channels, and capture higher operating margins. [13] On the other hand, traditional SMEs, such as local retailers and service providers, have often relied on gatekeepers to handle customer acquisition, data analysis, and logistics through their platforms. When regulation requires these services to be separated to increase competition, these businesses may lose some of the convenience they previously benefited from. At the same time, many SMEs lack the resources and capabilities to develop their own direct channels, which can ultimately lead to higher operating costs.

Sectoral variations further accentuate these divergent outcomes through different operational channels:

• App Developers and Digital Content Creators;
• E-commerce and Direct Retailers;
• Hospitality and Independent Accommodations.[14]

Firm size within the broader SME classification also determines the ability to adapt to new regulations. Medium-sized enterprises and rapidly scaling firms frequently possess the financial resources to absorb short-term adaptation costs, pivot toward first-party data collection, and implement independent customer relationship management platforms. Smaller enterprises instead operate under tight liquidity constraints and lack the scale to balance higher marginal customer acquisition costs. Consequently, regulatory enforcement can unintentionally trigger a process of re-intermediation, where smaller merchants trade dependency on regulated gatekeepers for dependency on unregulated second-tier platform intermediaries.

Ultimately, the economic consequences of the Digital Markets Act depend on an enterprise’s ability to internalize regulatory rights and adjust to fragmented platform architecture. While digital SMEs use the DMA as a reason to disintermediate gatekeepers and gain control over user relationships, smaller traditional SMEs encounter increased operational friction. Addressing this structural divide requires complementary policy measures focused on digital skills and technological adoption to ensure that regulatory contestability translates into real benefits for all SME segments.

2.5. Policy Recommendations

Considering the structural asymmetries and heterogeneous impacts analyzed in previous sections, it becomes clear that the entry into force of Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 does not automatically guarantee a contestable and fair digital market. While ex-ante provisions have removed historical barriers to entry, implementation rigidities and indirect costs borne by small and medium-sized enterprises require a refinement of the regulatory and executive framework. To prevent the Digital Markets Act from becoming a formal compliance exercise or generating unwanted distortions to the detriment of businesses and consumers, recent research has identified key strategic recommendations aimed at improving institutional processes, strengthening trust among ecosystem stakeholders, and mitigating operational frictions for SMEs.

A key area for improvement is the EU’s institutional and enforcement framework. Given the technical complexity and wide range of platforms covered by the DMA, the European Commission may not have sufficient resources to effectively monitor all designated gatekeepers. Centralized enforcement can also create legal uncertainty and delay businesses in exercising their rights. To address these issues, institutional responsibilities should be clearer, with specialized and independent bodies able to maintain regular technical dialogue with gatekeepers and resolve issues without always relying on formal legal proceedings. Greater involvement of national competition authorities and sector regulators through a coordinated network could also strengthen investigative capacity and allow for faster interventions.

At the same time, transitioning toward full regulatory effectiveness requires fostering trust and cooperation among regulators, gatekeepers, and SMEs. Qualitative evidence from early implementation indicates that low trust in current regulatory procedures restrains spontaneous compliance adoption by gatekeepers and discourages SMEs from fully exploiting new opportunities regarding interoperability and data portability. In this perspective, ex-ante regulation must not function as a one-sided penalizing monologue, but rather as a dynamic process of shared decision-making.[15]

To bring to reality this vision and maximize tangible benefits for the SME ecosystem, four priority policy recommendations are identified:

• Institutionalization of a structured and inclusive regulatory dialogue: Regular consultation platforms must be established with direct participation from SME trade associations, rather than relying exclusively on large industrial players or gatekeepers. Involving business users early in designing compliance solutions prevents technical modifications to platform architecture from inadvertently harming user experience or conversion rates for smaller merchants.
• Enhancement of technical resources and enforcement standardization: The European Commission and coordinated national authorities must build advanced analytical and technological capabilities to monitor compliance with Articles 5 and 6 effectively. Establishing shared technical standards for real-time data portability and interoperability would substantially lower IT integration costs, which currently burden less digitalized SMEs disproportionately.
• Active support for SME digital adaptation capacities: Formally removing market entry bottlenecks does not automatically translate into commercial success. Ex-ante enforcement must be complemented by public policies providing technical and financial support to build data analytics and digital management capabilities within SMEs. Without internal capabilities to process data and manage direct customer relationships, smaller firms cannot capture the potential gains from service unbundling or raw data access.
• Continuous monitoring of indirect impacts and negative externalities: Regulatory authorities should implement ex-post impact assessment mechanisms to detect unintended consequences early, such as sharp increases in customer acquisition costs (CAC) or disintermediation driving traffic back toward more expensive third-party channels. flexible regulatory framework must allow for calibrating operational remedies whenever empirical evidence demonstrates systematic harm to smaller enterprise segments.[16]

In conclusion, the ultimate success of the Digital Markets Act in supporting competition and driving innovation depends on the Union’s ability to evolve from prescriptive rules to efficient, participatory, and adaptive enforcement. Only through balanced governance that reduces procedural and operational uncertainty and actively supports SMEs in their strategic repositioning can the digital single market convert theoretical contestability into genuine opportunities for economic growth and competitive fairness.

3. Conclusion

The Digital Markets Act was designed to answer a question that traditional antitrust law had struggled to address for a long time: what happens when a handful of platforms become so structurally integrated in the digital economy that ordinary competition enforcement arrives too late to be efficient.

What emerges from the analysis, though, is that the DMA cannot be judged as simply good or bad for small and medium enterprises. It consists in a redistribution of structural power that creates winners and losers depending on factors that have little to do with the regulation itself and everything to do with the firms it touches. The prohibition of anti-steering clauses, the mandates on data portability, and the restrictions on self-preferencing all remove real and long-standing bottlenecks that gatekeepers used to extract rents and lock in dependent businesses. These are not superficial changes, because they allow SMEs to build direct relationships with their customers, diversify away from a single dominant platform, and recover margins that were previously absorbed by app store fees or algorithmic favoritism toward the platform’s own services.

At the same time, the regulation that dismantles these bottlenecks also dismantles the efficiencies that platform integration used to provide, and this is where the double-edged nature of the DMA becomes most evident. Many SMEs, particularly those without a proper digital team or a first-party data strategy, relied on gatekeepers as a kind of outsourced infrastructure. When that infrastructure is separated to satisfy the DMA’s fairness obligations, some businesses gain the tools to build something of their own, while others simply lose what they had without gaining the capacity to replace it. The Copenhagen Business School findings on revenue risk and rising customer acquisition costs are not an argument against the regulation, but they are a reminder that contestability on paper does not automatically translate into contestability in practice.

This is exactly why section 2.4 of this report matters more than a purely descriptive account of costs and benefits would. Digitally native firms can treat the DMA as a lever, using new rights to disintermediate the platforms they once depended on. Traditional SMEs, especially smaller and newer enterprises operating on thin margins, are more likely to experience the same regulation as a source of disruption they did not ask for and cannot fully deal with. If anything, the risk highlighted here, that of re-intermediation toward unregulated second-tier platforms, suggests that dismantling gatekeepers without properly managing the underlying resource gap can simply relocate dependency rather than eliminate it.

This is the central lesson this report tries to bring out. The DMA was built to correct a market failure rooted in scale, network effects, and switching costs, and on those terms, it is a serious and largely coherent piece of regulation. But market power was never the only constraint SMEs faced, because digital skills, technical capacity, and financial resilience were always unequally distributed across the SME population. The policy recommendations discussed in this report are what determines whether the rights the regulation creates are usable by the businesses they were meant to protect.

In conclusion, the Digital Markets Act should be understood as a necessary but insufficient condition for a genuinely contestable digital single market. It removes artificial barriers that no SME, however capable, could have overcome on its own. But it does not, and probably cannot, equalize the starting conditions of a software developer in Paris and a family-run retailer in a small city in Romania. Whether the DMA ends up narrowing or widening the gap between these two kinds of businesses will depend less on the text of Regulation 2022/1925 itself, and more on whether the institutional and policy architecture around it evolves to meet SMEs where they actually are.

4.  Sources and Literature

·      European Commission, “Regulation (EU) 2022/1925” (Digital Markets Act), November 2022.

·      Copenhagen Business School, “Economic Impact of the Digital Markets Act on European Businesses and the European Economy”, June 2025.

·      European Commission, “Commission fines Apple over €1.8 billion over abusive App store rules for music streaming providers”, March 2024.

·      David S. Evans and Richard Schmalensee, “Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms”, September 2016.

·      Cremér, de Montjoye & Schweitzer, “Competition Policy for the Digital Era”, 2019.

·      Bauer, M. et al. “After the DMA: Regulatory Impacts on the EU Digital Economy”, 2022.

·      Cennamo, C., Kretschmer, T., Constantiou, I., & Garcés, E. “Economic Impact of the Digital Markets Act on European Businesses and the European Economy”, 2025.

·      Balestrini, M., Serrano i Sorroca, L., & Arjomandi, D. “Implementing the Digital Markets Act: Policy Recommendations for Competitive, Innovative and Trusted Digital Ecosystems”, 2026.

·      Feasey, R., Monti, G., & de Streel, A. “Policy Recommendations to Improve DMA Process and Institutions”, 2025.

[1] European Commission, “Review highlights Digital Markets Act remains fit for purpose and has positive impact”, April 2026.

[2] Copenhagen Business School, “Economic Impact of the Digital Markets Act on European Businesses and the European Economy”, June 2025.

[3] European Commission, “Commission fines Apple over €1.8 billion over abusive App store rules for music streaming providers”, March 2024.

[4] David S. Evans and Richard Schmalensee, “Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms”, September 2016.

[5] Cremér, de Montjoye & Schweitzer, “Competition Policy for the Digital Era (Chapter 2)”, 2019

[6] European Commission, “Regulation (EU) 2022/1925” (Digital Markets Act), 2022.

[7] Crémer, J., de Montjoye, Y.-A., & Schweitzer.” Competition Policy for the Digital Era”, 2019.

[8] Bauer, M. et al. “After the DMA: Regulatory Impacts on the EU Digital Economy”, 2022.

[9] Cennamo, C., Kretschmer, T., Constantiou, I., & Garcés, E. “Economic Impact of the Digital Markets Act on European Businesses and the European Economy”, 2025.

[10] Evans, D. S., & Schmalensee, R. “Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms”, 2016.

[11] Yuvaraj, A. “Google’s Response to Digital Markets Act Causes 20% Drop in Organic Traffic for Hotels”, 2024.

[12] Cennamo, C., Kretschmer, T., Constantiou, I., & Garcés, E. (2025). “Economic Impact of the Digital Markets Act on European Businesses and the European Economy”, 2025.

[13] Balestrini, M., Serrano i Sorroca, L., & Arjomandi, D. “Implementing the Digital Markets Act: Policy Recommendations for Competitive, Innovative and Trusted Digital Ecosystems”, 2026.

[14] Feasey, R., Monti, & de Streel, A. “Policy Recommendations to Improve DMA Process and Institutions”, 2025.

[15] Feasey, R., Monti, & de Streel, A. “Policy Recommendations to Improve DMA Process and Institutions”, 2025.

[16] Balestrini, M., Serrano i Sorroca, L., & Arjomandi, D. “Implementing the Digital Markets Act: Policy Recommendations for Competitive, Innovative and Trusted Digital Ecosystems”, 2026.