The European Commission just put a target on the backs of the two biggest cloud providers in Europe. On June 25, the EU preliminarily designated Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as “gatekeepers” under the Digital Markets Act, a regulatory framework that forces dominant platforms to play nicer with competitors and customers alike.
What the DMA designation actually means
The preliminary designation stems from a market investigation the Commission launched on November 18, 2025. That probe scrutinized how AWS and Azure’s dominance in European cloud computing creates high switching costs and vendor lock-in for businesses that rely on their infrastructure.
The designation doesn’t require AWS and Azure to meet the DMA’s standard quantitative thresholds. Instead, the Commission used a qualitative assessment, essentially arguing that market position and switching costs alone justify the label.
Once designated, the obligations are substantial. Gatekeepers must ensure interoperability with competing services, enable data portability so customers can move their workloads elsewhere without prohibitive friction, and stop self-preferencing their own products over competitors’ offerings.
