EU moves to designate AWS and Azure as DMA gatekeepers, bypassing quantitative thresholds

The European Commission told Amazon and Microsoft today that it views their cloud arms — Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure — as gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act, even though neither service meets the regulation's quantitative thresholds. It is the first time Brussels has aimed DMA gatekeeper rules directly at cloud infrastructure.

The DMA was built around hard numbers: minimum annual EU turnover, active user counts, and market presence metrics that trigger automatic gatekeeper designation. AWS and Azure clear none of the cloud-specific bars. Rather than walking away, the Commission has invoked the regulation's qualitative route, arguing both services function as an "important gateway" between businesses and their EU customers regardless of where the numbers land.

What gatekeeper designation would mean

If the designation survives the companies' legal challenges, AWS and Azure would face the DMA's full set of obligations: no self-preferencing their own services over competitors on their platforms, mandatory interoperability with competing cloud providers, and data portability rules designed to lower switching costs. The Commission explicitly cited lock-in and high switching costs as the core problem — businesses that build on AWS or Azure face enormous migration friction when attempting to switch providers.

Both companies have objected. Amazon argued publicly that applying the DMA to cloud would "regulate away European competitiveness and resilience." Microsoft has not disclosed its counter-arguments. Neither company has been formally designated yet. The preliminary finding triggers a defence phase in which both firms can contest the Commission's reasoning before a final decision, expected within months.

The AI infrastructure angle

The EU's stated motivation goes beyond cloud market structure. Executive Vice-President for tech sovereignty Henna Virkkunen placed the AI subtext directly on the record: cloud services have become "a prerequisite for AI," with more than half of EU businesses now dependent on them. Brussels is not just regulating cloud infrastructure — it is trying to prevent the foundational layer beneath European AI development from becoming a locked-down duopoly.

AWS and Microsoft Azure together control an estimated 57% of European cloud infrastructure spending. Adding Google Cloud, three providers account for roughly 80% of the market. The preliminary findings follow a seven-month Commission investigation. As reported by TNW and the European Commission's official press notice (IP/26/1444), published June 25, 2026.