AWS and Azure Face First DMA Gatekeeper Rules for Cloud Infrastructure

Published by James Harris on June 25, 2026June 25, 2026

The European Commission has issued a preliminary ruling that would designate Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services as gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act, applying the regulation to cloud providers for the first time and requiring both companies to stop favoring their own products, enable data portability, and ensure interoperability with competitors.

The DMA was built around consumer-facing platforms: app stores, search engines, social networks. Extending it to cloud infrastructure is a meaningful escalation, targeting the layer that now underpins most enterprise AI deployment rather than the apps that run on top of it. In its announcement, the Commission argued that AWS and Azure qualify as essential services despite not meeting the DMA’s standard size thresholds, on the basis that switching costs are prohibitively high and that AI partnerships have entrenched their positions further. The logic matters: it signals that the Commission is willing to stretch the DMA’s existing framework to reach infrastructure players rather than wait for new legislation. That is a faster, riskier approach, and both companies have until November’s final ruling to challenge it in writing.

Google Cloud’s absence from the preliminary designation is the sharpest edge here, and Microsoft has already said so publicly.

Both Microsoft and AWS have objected, with the AWS spokesman arguing the decision “fails to account for the range of cloud solutions available to European consumers” and warning it could discourage investment. The Microsoft representative pointed directly at Google’s Gemini integration as a competitive distortion the Commission is ignoring. The Commission’s counter-position, implicit in its framing around [Europe](https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-reaches-preliminary-position-amazons-and-microsofts-market-leading-cloud-services-should)’s digital future, is that market share concentration itself is the problem, regardless of which firm benefits from asymmetric enforcement in the short term. Google may be added in a subsequent ruling, and the EU’s Data Act, coming into force in 2027, will impose portability requirements across the board regardless.

If the November ruling confirms the designation, AWS and Azure will have six months to comply, a timeline that will consume legal and engineering resources during a period when both are racing to capture AI infrastructure demand in Europe. Smaller European cloud providers, the constituency the Commission is implicitly trying to protect, stand to benefit most if the interoperability requirements hold, though enforcement track record under the DMA so far has been uneven. The deeper signal is that the EU has decided AI competition will be shaped at the infrastructure layer, not the application layer, and it intends to be the regulator that sets those terms.