EU Moves to Designate AWS and Azure as Gatekeepers Under Its Digital Markets Act

The European Commission is preparing to bring the world's two biggest cloud platforms under its toughest digital rules, according to a Bloomberg report, moving to designate Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

The designation is still a draft and the timing could slip, but officials could finalize it as soon as November, the report said. The Commission itself has not publicly set a date and says its review is ongoing with no final decision taken.

Cloud computing has sat outside the DMA perimeter until now, even as the law already covers app stores, search engines, operating systems and messaging services run by Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and ByteDance. Neither AWS nor Azure meets the DMA's standard size and user-number thresholds, so the Commission relied on a market investigation - opened in November 2025 - that lets it designate a service when it acts as an important gateway despite missing the formal tests.

In June, regulators shared a preliminary view that both services qualify. AWS is the largest cloud provider in the EU and Azure the second-largest. The Commission's reasoning centers on lock-in: moving large workloads between clouds is expensive and technically messy, often penalized by data egress fees, while each platform's ecosystem of managed services makes leaving harder over time. The rise of AI, where training and inference depend heavily on access to cloud GPUs and proprietary model services, added weight to the case.

If the designation becomes final, AWS and Azure would face a six-month compliance clock. Obligations are expected to include a ban on favoring their own services over rivals, requirements to work with competing platforms, and rules that make it easier for customers to move data and workloads elsewhere. Breaches can draw fines of up to 10% of a company's worldwide annual revenue, rising to 20% for repeat offenses; the EU fined Google about 890 million euros in July over separate DMA violations.

Both companies have pushed back. AWS has argued that Europe already regulates cloud switching through the Data Act, which began phasing out switching charges in 2025, and that additional DMA rules could deter investment in Europe. Microsoft has said Europe's cloud market is innovative and highly competitive, and that it is working with regulators on the review.

The move lands against a backdrop of transatlantic friction. In July 2026, President Donald Trump announced a formal inquiry into EU trade policies and publicly criticized the DMA, warning of retaliation over penalties on U.S. technology firms. The Bloomberg report did not say whether that tension would affect the timing or substance of the cloud investigation.

A formal designation would start the six-month compliance clock, putting the first deadline around mid-2027 - a timeline that could reshape multi-cloud economics for developers well beyond Europe.