Commission Preliminarily Backs DMA Gatekeeper Status for AWS and Azure
The European Commission has informed Amazon and Microsoft of its preliminary view that they should be designated as gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act for their cloud computing services, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The Commission considers AWS and Azure to be the largest and second-largest cloud computing services in the EU and an important gateway between business users and their customers, even though the services do not appear to meet the DMA’s quantitative designation thresholds.
The preliminary findings focus on market strength, scale, and dependency. Amazon and Microsoft are already designated as gatekeepers for other core platform services, which supports the Commission’s view that both companies have a significant impact on the internal market. For cloud services, the Commission points to substantial turnover, large and entrenched user bases, high operational capacity, major investment levels, and switching costs that may make it difficult for customers to move to competing providers.
Artificial intelligence is also central to the Commission’s assessment. Cloud infrastructure has become a key input for the development, deployment, and scaling of AI services. The Commission notes that AWS and Azure benefit from extensive AI tools, partnerships, and ecosystems, which increasingly influence cloud procurement decisions. As demand for AI-related cloud services grows, the Commission is concerned that a large share of that demand may remain inside Amazon’s and Microsoft’s existing cloud environments.
The case is legally significant because the DMA allows the Commission to designate a company as a gatekeeper even where quantitative thresholds are not met, provided the qualitative criteria are satisfied. These include significant impact on the internal market, the existence of an important gateway between businesses and end users, and an entrenched and durable market position. The Commission’s assessment may therefore become an important precedent for how the DMA applies to infrastructure services that sit behind consumer-facing digital markets.
The Commission also highlights the wider importance of cloud computing for Europe’s economy, public administrations, industrial sectors, healthcare, financial services, and AI development. More than half of EU businesses now rely on cloud services, making fair, open, secure, and interoperable cloud markets a central concern for EU digital policy and strategic autonomy.
The findings remain preliminary and do not determine the final outcome. Amazon and Microsoft may now access the investigation file and respond in writing. If the Commission confirms its position, it will adopt designation decisions, after which Amazon and Microsoft would have six months to bring AWS and Azure into full compliance with the DMA obligations applicable to designated services.
