Brussels named six gatekeepers with a compliance clock

The signal

In the advertising and platform-regulation sector, the European Commission's gatekeepers register records that on 6 September 2023 it designated six companies, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft, as gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act, covering 22 core platform services including search, app stores, operating systems, messaging and social networking. A Commission press release issued the same day, IP/23/4328, states that designated gatekeepers were given a six-month period to bring each service into compliance with the Act's obligations. The register has since been updated: Apple's iPadOS was added on 29 April 2024, Booking.com was designated on 13 May 2024, and Meta's Facebook Marketplace was removed from the list on 23 April 2025.

The evidence

The designation decisions rest on quantitative thresholds set out in Regulation (EU) 2022/1925, adopted 14 September 2022 and published in the Official Journal on 12 October 2022, whose Article 3 requires a gatekeeper to comply with the core obligations "within six months" of being added to the list. That is a statutory mechanism, not a discretionary grace period, which is why the six-month gap between a September designation and a compliance date the following spring is a scheduled feature of the law rather than a sign of delay.

Timeframe and confidence

This is an editorial reading: the designation date and the list of designated services are as firm as a Commission register can make them, since the register is the primary record and is updated as decisions change. What is less settled from these documents alone is how compliance is judged in practice, because the register lists obligations but not a verified compliance outcome for each service, which follows through separate specification and enforcement decisions.

What would change the reading

A Commission non-compliance decision against a named gatekeeper, or a court ruling on an appeal against designation, would convert this from a scheduling signal into an enforcement signal. A continuing pattern of services being added to or removed from the register, as already happened with iPadOS and Facebook Marketplace, would show the definition of a core platform service is still being actively tested rather than settled in 2023.

• Has a designated gatekeeper changed a specific product feature by its compliance date, or only issued a statement of intent to comply?
• Does the six-month statutory clock start from designation or from a later administrative step, and which date does a given compliance claim use?
• What distinguishes an obligation already in force from one still subject to an open specification or appeal?

The designation is a firm regulatory fact with a clear date and a named list; whether it changes advertising practice as intended is a separate question the register alone cannot answer.

Source trail

1. List of Gatekeepers and their Core Platform Servicesdigital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu · Source publication: not established · Retrieved 2026-09-16

   Records the 6 September 2023 designation of six gatekeepers and subsequent additions and removals.

2. Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act)eur-lex.europa.eu · Source publication: 2022-09-14 · Retrieved 2026-09-16

   Gives the Regulation's adoption and Official Journal dates and the six-month compliance rule in Article 3.

3. Digital Markets Act: Commission designates six gatekeepers (IP/23/4328)ec.europa.eu · Source publication: 2023-09-06 · Retrieved 2026-09-16

   States the six-month compliance period given to the six designated gatekeepers and the 22-service count.

Read across the evidence

• Apple's tracking prompt reshaped how advertisers target
• The CMA blocked, then cleared, the Activision deal in 2023
• The GDPR's application date reached beyond the EU's borders

Platforms & distribution · All 100 historical records