Opera had argued that the European Commission had erred ‘by failing to designate Microsoft as a gatekeeper in relation to its web browser core platform service Edge’.
Norwegian web browser provider Opera has lost a legal challenge at the EU Court of Justice against the European Commission’s 2024 decision that Microsoft and its Edge browser should not be subject to the ‘gatekeeper’ designation and restrictions under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Opera had argued that the Commission had erred “by failing to designate Microsoft as a gatekeeper in relation to its web browser core platform service Edge, based on the finding that Edge is not an important gateway for business users to reach end users”.
In its judgement today (2 September), the EU’s General Court, based in Luxembourg, agreed with the Commission’s original decision that Edge does not “constitute an important gateway within the meaning” of the DMA and therefore Microsoft should not be deemed a gatekeeper in this context.
The court ruled that the Commission “did not err in considering that, although Microsoft had met the quantitative thresholds laid down in the DMA, it had put forward sufficiently substantiated arguments to demonstrate that Edge did not constitute an important gateway”.
