Europe’s tech referee grades its own homework
The European Commission just gave itself a positive review on the DMA, but Dirk Auer of the ICLE argues this self-grading ignores the DMA’s real costs: broken features, delayed AI, and a decline in European competitiveness. Is the "tech referee" grading its own homework too generously?
This opinion piece is authored by Dirk Auer, who is the Director of Competition Policy at the International Center for Law & Economics.
The European Commission has reviewed its flagship tech law and declared success. That verdict tells you less about the Digital Markets Act (DMA) than about the referee.
Across Europe, familiar services now feel off. Google search no longer opens with a clickable map for hotels. Apple’s AirPods still lack live translation. Consent screens interrupt routine tasks. These changes trace back to the DMA, in force since 2024, which dictates how designated ‘gatekeepers’—Apple, Meta, Alphabet and Amazon— must design products for European users.
In its first formal review, the Commission says the law is ‘fit for purpose’, has delivered a ‘tangible positive impact’, and needs no revision. It concedes some ‘untapped potential’ but leaves no doubt about the headline: carry on.
That is self-marking on a grand scale. The Commission wrote the rules, chose the targets, set the compliance templates, ran the consultation and now grades the outcome. Unsurprisingly, it likes what it sees.
Read past the summary and the case weakens. The report leans on claims that users have ‘more control’ over data, that ‘alternative browsers and search engines are being increasingly chosen’, and that new messaging apps have launched under interoperability mandates. The operative word is ‘more’.
More than what? A few extra clicks on a choice screen do not prove a better experience, any more than a longer cookie banner proves informed consent. Even if these marginal shifts are real, the review never weighs them against compliance costs, degraded features and the daily friction users now face.
The evidence base looks thin. The Commission’s preceding call for evidence drew 62 responses; not one came from a gatekeeper. A companion study on social-media interoperability—central to the DMA—found mixed demand and warned that extending the regime would be premature. Critics said as much before the law passed.
Meanwhile, the costs are mounting. To comply with the DMA’s ban on self-preferencing, Google has pushed maps, flights and hotel results deeper into search. The result is not vibrant competition but a worse product. Independent estimates suggest clicks from Google ads to hotel websites have fallen about 17.6 per cent, and direct hotel bookings by as much as 30 per cent, shifting revenue from European hoteliers to a handful of large online travel agents. That looks less like fairness than a regulator-driven wealth transfer.
Innovation has slowed. Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Threads and Google’s AI Overviews all reached Europe months late, in some cases more than half a year after launch elsewhere. The Commission counts these absences as nothing to fret over. They are, in practice, the regime’s most consequential effect.
Security risks have grown. Apple warns that interoperability and sideloading mandates make it harder to keep bad actors out. Forcing platforms to open data flows to third parties creates new attack surfaces. Users pay through fraud, malware and eroded trust—costs that do not appear in compliance dashboards.
Set this review against Mario Draghi’s report on European competitiveness, which the Commission says it endorses. Mr Draghi’s diagnosis was blunt: Europe lags because it overregulates, fragments capital markets and fails to scale world-class firms. His prescription: simplify rules, reduce burdens and let companies grow. He even called last year for a pause on new AI regulation.
The DMA review moves in the opposite direction. It treats degraded services and delayed launches as acceptable collateral in a project whose benefits remain unproven and whose costs the Commission declines to measure. As Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni put it—echoing Mr Draghi’s thrust—‘America innovates, China replicates, Europe regulates.’
The DMA can be improved. This review suggests the Commission will not lead that effort. If Europe is serious about competitiveness, the next assessment should not come from the teacher who wrote the exam, marked the paper and now insists the grade stands.