Commission’s DMA Review ‘Marks Its Own Homework’, Ignores Costs to Europeans
BRUSSELS (28 April 2026) — The European Commission’s first review of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a striking exercise in self-assessment that glosses over rising costs for European users and businesses, said Dirk Auer, director of competition policy at the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE).
The Commission concludes the DMA is ‘fit for purpose,’ has had a ‘tangible positive impact,’ and ‘does not need to be revised,’ conceding only ‘untapped potential.’ Auer said an institution that wrote the rules, selected the targets, ran the consultations and now grades the outcome cannot credibly evaluate its own work .
ICLE scholars say the review largely ignores well-documented harms. Independent estimates suggest DMA-driven changes to Google Search have reduced clicks from Google ads to European hotel websites by about 17.6 per cent and cut direct hotel bookings by as much as 30 per cent — shifting revenue from European hoteliers to a handful of large online travel agents. Major product launches, including Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Threads and Google’s AI Overviews, were delayed in Europe by months, in some cases by more than half a year. Apple has also warned that the DMA’s interoperability and sideloading mandates create new attack surfaces that pose security risks to European users — costs absent from compliance reports.
Auer said the review’s celebratory tone clashes with the Commission’s stated competitiveness agenda:
‘The Commission designed the rules, chose the targets, drafted the compliance templates, ran the consultations, and has now graded the results. Unsurprisingly, the teacher is pleased with the pupil. The headline claims that Europeans have gained ‘more control,’ ‘more choice,’ and ‘more interoperability’ all turn on the word ‘more’—with no serious attempt to weigh those marginal shifts against the vast compliance costs, the degraded products, and the missing innovations that Europeans now navigate every day. This triumphalist verdict is the precise opposite of the Draghi agenda the Commission claims to endorse. If Europe is serious about Draghi, the next DMA review needs to be done by someone other than the teacher.’
The review follows a ‘call for evidence’ that drew 62 responses, with no participation from firms covered by the regulation. A flagship study on social media interoperability, commissioned alongside the review, found ‘mixed results’ on consumer demand and concluded that extending the DMA in that area would be ‘premature’.
To arrange an interview with Auer, contact Jim Fellinger at [email protected].
About ICLE
The International Center for Law & Economics is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center working with a roster of more than one-hundred academic affiliates and research centers from around the globe. ICLE scholars promote the use of law and economics methodologies to inform public policy debates.