Brussels is preparing to pull cloud computing into the same regulatory bucket as Google Search and the Apple App Store. According to Bloomberg reporting published October 2, 2026, the European Commission plans to formally designate Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as “gatekeepers” under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) as soon as November 2026. It would be the first time the law has reached into cloud infrastructure rather than consumer-facing platforms, and it puts a hard number on the table: companies that breach the DMA face fines of up to 10% of worldwide annual turnover, rising to 20% for repeat violations.
The move has been building for almost a year. The Commission opened its investigation into AWS and Azure in November 2025, then told both companies on June 25, 2026 that its preliminary view was they should be designated gatekeepers for their cloud services. Reporting through October 5-6 shows that view hardening, with a final decision now expected within weeks. For an industry built on long-term contracts and proprietary data formats, that shift could reshape how European enterprises buy, migrate, and pay for cloud infrastructure.
What the European Commission Just Signaled
The Commission’s June 25 notice to Amazon and Microsoft wasn’t a fine or a final ruling. It was a preliminary position, the kind of warning shot that gives companies a chance to respond before Brussels commits to a decision. But the language was pointed: the Commission described AWS as the largest cloud computing service in the EU and Azure as the second-largest, calling both an “important gateway” between businesses and their customers. That framing matters because it borrows directly from the DMA’s core logic, which treats gatekeepers as chokepoints that smaller firms can’t avoid.
Bloomberg’s October 2 report said the Commission could finalize the designation as early as November, though the timing could still slip. Once a service is formally designated, the operator typically gets six months to comply with the DMA’s behavioral obligations. If November holds, AWS and Azure would be working against a mid-2027 compliance clock while simultaneously navigating a separate EU Data Act deadline landing in January 2027 (more on that below). Neither Amazon nor Microsoft has publicly confirmed how it will respond to a final designation, and the Commission has not committed to a fixed decision date.
Why Cloud Computing Is a New Target for the DMA
When Brussels first started naming gatekeepers under the DMA, the designations covered search engines, app stores, social networks, and desktop operating systems. Cloud infrastructure sat outside that list. The standard gatekeeper test requires a company to show roughly €7.5 billion in EU turnover across each of the past three years, or an equivalent market valuation, combined with at least 45 million monthly active end users and 10,000 business users in the bloc.
What’s notable about the AWS and Azure case is that the Commission is leaning on qualitative evidence rather than resting the designation purely on those numeric thresholds. Its reasoning points to entrenched user bases, broad technology ecosystems, high switching costs, and customer lock-in, the same pattern regulators have used to argue that a handful of hyperscalers control the infrastructure layer underneath most of the EU’s digital economy, including the AI services increasingly built on top of it. That’s a meaningful precedent: if a service can be designated on lock-in effects alone, other infrastructure categories, not just search or messaging, become fair game for future DMA scrutiny.
Inside the Lock-In Problem: Egress Fees and Switching Costs
The practical complaint behind this case is simple: moving data out of a cloud provider costs money, and that cost discourages customers from leaving. Public list prices cited in coverage of the proceeding put AWS internet data egress at roughly $0.09 per gigabyte after the free allowance, with Azure listed at approximately $0.087 per gigabyte for comparable internet egress. Those are representative list-price figures, not what every customer actually pays. Real invoices vary by region, destination, committed-use discounts, and private connectivity arrangements, but the sticker price is still what most IT teams budget against before negotiating anything down.
Egress pricing isn’t the whole story. Proprietary APIs, managed-service dependencies, and licensing terms that favor a vendor’s own operating systems all raise the cost of leaving, even when the sticker price on data transfer looks manageable. That’s a dynamic Cloudflare has tried to exploit directly on the pricing side, positioning its R2 storage against AWS S3 on egress cost specifically. The European Commission’s complaint is structurally the same one competitors have made for years: it’s not any single fee that locks a customer in, it’s the combination of fees, formats, and contractual terms working together.
Timeline: How the EU Cloud Gatekeeper Case Unfolded
The case has moved through distinct phases over roughly a year, from a quiet investigation opening to a public preliminary finding and, now, reports of an imminent final decision.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | European Commission opens investigation into whether AWS and Azure should be DMA gatekeepers |
| June 25, 2026 | Commission tells Amazon and Microsoft its preliminary view: both cloud services should be designated gatekeepers |
| October 2, 2026 | Bloomberg reports the Commission is preparing to finalize the designation, possibly in November |
| October 5-6, 2026 | Trade press describes AWS and Azure moving closer to gatekeeper status, tied to interoperability and egress-fee scrutiny |
| Possible November 2026 | Final designation decision expected, date not yet confirmed by the Commission |
| Six months post-designation | Compliance window for interoperability, anti-lock-in, and anti-self-preferencing obligations, if designation is confirmed |
| January 12, 2027 | EU Data Act deadline: cloud providers can no longer charge switching fees, including egress charges tied to switching |
AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Europe’s Market Snapshot
The Commission’s own language ranks AWS first and Azure second among cloud services in the EU, but it has not published a detailed percentage breakdown. Trade publications covering the proceeding cite an industry estimate putting AWS and Azure’s combined share of EU cloud revenue somewhere between 65% and 70% in the first quarter of 2026, a figure that should be treated as a market-research estimate rather than an official Commission statistic. Other recent market data has shown Google Cloud narrowing the gap globally, and AWS’s overall worldwide share slipping toward 28% even as its EU position stays dominant.
| Provider | EU Commission Ranking | List Internet Egress Price | DMA Designation Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services | Largest cloud service in the EU | ~$0.09/GB | Preliminary gatekeeper view issued June 2026 |
| Microsoft Azure | Second-largest cloud service in the EU | ~$0.087/GB | Preliminary gatekeeper view issued June 2026 |
| Google Cloud | Described as a major third provider, no Commission percentage published | Not part of current designation proceeding | Not currently under DMA cloud gatekeeper review |
Google’s absence from the current proceeding is worth noting. The Commission’s preliminary view names only AWS and Azure, which tracks with their larger combined EU footprint, but it also means Google Cloud could gain some regulatory breathing room that its two larger rivals won’t have if the designation becomes final. Microsoft’s own disclosures have shown Azure as a fast-growing, increasingly transparent revenue line, which raises the stakes for Microsoft specifically if new compliance costs land on top of that growth.
The EU Data Act’s Separate Deadline: January 12, 2027
It’s easy to conflate the DMA proceeding with the EU Data Act, but they run on separate tracks. The Data Act applies generally to cloud providers operating in the EU, regardless of gatekeeper status, and its cloud-switching provisions are built to reduce technical and contractual barriers to moving workloads between providers. The most concrete milestone is January 12, 2027, the date by which providers must stop charging customers for switching, including the data-egress charges tied specifically to a switching event.
That creates an odd overlap. If the Commission finalizes the AWS and Azure gatekeeper designation in November 2026, the six-month DMA compliance clock would run almost in parallel with the Data Act’s January 2027 switching-fee ban. In practice, AWS and Azure could be negotiating two separate sets of obligations, one aimed at interoperability and self-preferencing under the DMA, the other aimed specifically at switching costs under the Data Act, inside roughly the same six-to-eight month window.
What Gatekeeper Status Would Actually Require
A final DMA designation doesn’t just add paperwork. Reported obligations tied to a cloud gatekeeper designation include interoperability requirements, limits on treating a provider’s own services more favorably than competitors’ (self-preferencing), and measures intended to reduce customer lock-in more broadly than the Data Act’s switching-fee rules alone. For AWS, that could mean rethinking how its own managed services interoperate with third-party tools running on EKS or similar environments. For Azure, it could mean revisiting licensing terms that CISPE members have already flagged as favoring Microsoft’s own cloud over competing infrastructure running the same software.
None of this has been finalized into specific rules yet. The Commission’s preliminary notice described the categories of concern rather than publishing a rulebook, and the exact compliance requirements would only take shape after a final designation. That ambiguity is itself a risk factor for enterprise buyers trying to plan multi-year cloud commitments right now, since contract terms signed in late 2026 could run headlong into obligations that don’t exist yet on paper.
DMA Penalties and Enforcement Risk
No cloud-specific DMA fine has been imposed on AWS or Microsoft as of October 6, 2026. The June 2026 notice was a preliminary designation step, not a penalty decision, and the Commission has not reported any Data Act fine against a cloud provider over switching or egress practices either. The numbers that matter right now are the statutory ceilings Brussels could reach for if a designated gatekeeper is later found noncompliant.
| Scenario | Maximum Exposure | Current Status |
|---|---|---|
| First DMA infringement | Up to 10% of worldwide annual turnover | Statutory maximum, no fine imposed on AWS/Azure as of Oct. 6, 2026 |
| Repeat DMA infringement | Up to 20% of worldwide annual turnover | Statutory maximum, not applicable without a prior finding |
| Data Act switching-fee violation | Not yet publicly specified for cloud switching | Rules take effect Jan. 12, 2027, no penalty precedent reported yet |
Those ceilings are designed to be large enough to change corporate behavior before enforcement ever reaches that stage. For context, a 10% global turnover fine against a company the size of Amazon or Microsoft would dwarf any cloud-specific penalty issued anywhere to date, which is exactly the kind of deterrent the DMA was built to carry.
The CISPE Complaints: How We Got Here
This proceeding didn’t appear out of nowhere. Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe, an industry group representing European infrastructure operators, spent years arguing that Microsoft’s licensing terms made it more expensive or technically harder to run Microsoft software on competing clouds. That pressure produced a settlement between CISPE and Microsoft in 2024 covering licensing and access conditions for Microsoft software running on rival infrastructure. A separate arrangement followed between CISPE and AWS in 2025, after AWS introduced changes meant to address complaints raised by European providers and customers.
Those settlements resolved specific contractual disputes. They didn’t touch the structural questions the DMA and Data Act are now aimed at: interoperability across the board, data portability, and the egress-fee economics behind switching. In other words, CISPE’s private settlements bought narrower fixes, while the current EU action is trying to set rules that apply regardless of what any individual provider agrees to in a side deal. A related EU push on cloud sovereignty has already shown how sensitive European governments are to dependency on US-based infrastructure, particularly where defense and public-sector workloads are concerned.
How AWS and Microsoft Are Likely to Respond
Neither company has published a detailed public response to the June 2026 preliminary notice, and the material available as of October 6 doesn’t include verifiable statements from AWS or Microsoft executives specifically addressing the gatekeeper designation. That silence is itself informative. Both companies still have the opportunity to contest the preliminary assessment before any final decision, and public comment ahead of that window tends to be limited by legal strategy rather than enthusiasm.
Based on the pattern set by the CISPE settlements, the more plausible playbook is incremental: negotiated concessions on licensing or pricing that blunt the sharpest criticisms without conceding the broader interoperability argument. AWS’s 2025 arrangement with CISPE followed exactly that shape, addressing specific complaints rather than rewriting its egress-pricing model wholesale. Expect similar targeted moves if the designation becomes final in November, rather than a sweeping voluntary redesign of either platform’s pricing structure.
European Cloud Providers See an Opening
For OVHcloud, Scaleway, Deutsche Telekom’s cloud arm, and other European infrastructure providers, a final gatekeeper designation would validate years of lobbying. Their core argument, that egress fees and proprietary ecosystems make genuine multi-cloud strategies uneconomical for most European customers, maps closely onto the Commission’s own stated reasoning about entrenched user bases and high switching costs. If the Data Act’s January 2027 switching-fee ban lands as scheduled, the practical effect is a lower cost floor for customers considering a move to a European alternative, regardless of whether the DMA designation itself survives contest.
That said, lower switching costs alone won’t close the gap in service breadth, managed AI tooling, or global data-center footprint that AWS and Azure have built over more than a decade. Regulatory pressure can reduce the penalty for leaving a hyperscaler, but it doesn’t automatically make a smaller European provider’s catalog competitive with Bedrock, SageMaker, or Azure’s equivalent managed AI stack. The more realistic outcome is incremental share gains in regulated or sovereignty-sensitive workloads rather than a wholesale shift away from the two largest providers.
Market and Enterprise Impact
For enterprise IT and FinOps teams, the immediate impact is uncertainty rather than any concrete rule change. Multi-year cloud commitments signed today could end up governed by interoperability rules that don’t exist yet, which argues for building contract flexibility into any large 2026-2027 cloud renewal rather than locking in rigid multi-year terms. Procurement teams negotiating enterprise agreements with AWS or Azure now have a new point of leverage: the prospect of regulator-mandated egress relief gives customers a credible reason to push back on current pricing during renewal conversations, even before any rule takes effect.
There’s also a compliance dimension beyond pricing. If the DMA designation proceeds, AWS and Azure will likely need to document interoperability commitments and self-preferencing safeguards for regulators, work that typically shows up in enterprise contracts as updated terms of service and compliance disclosures. Large customers in regulated sectors, banking, healthcare, and public administration, are the ones most likely to see those changes first, since they already carry the heaviest contractual scrutiny from both the provider and their own regulators.
Predictions: What Happens Next in Cloud Regulation
- A final DMA gatekeeper designation for AWS and Azure is likely to land in November or December 2026, though the Commission could still push the date into early 2027 if either company escalates its legal response.
- Expect targeted licensing or pricing concessions from AWS and Microsoft before any final enforcement action, following the pattern set by the 2024-2025 CISPE settlements rather than a full pricing overhaul.
- The January 12, 2027 Data Act switching-fee deadline will land regardless of how the DMA case resolves, since it applies to cloud providers generally rather than only to designated gatekeepers.
- Google Cloud’s exclusion from the current proceeding gives it a near-term competitive and reputational advantage in EU sales conversations, even without any change to its own pricing or terms.
- European providers such as OVHcloud and Scaleway will use the designation, final or not, as a marketing and lobbying point well into 2027, regardless of how much actual customer migration it produces.
Historical Context: From App Stores to Infrastructure
The DMA was built around consumer-facing chokepoints: search engines, app marketplaces, social networks, messaging apps, and desktop operating systems. Extending it to cloud infrastructure is a meaningful expansion of scope, and it follows a broader pattern in EU tech policy of treating infrastructure dependency as a competition problem rather than purely a security or sovereignty one. The Data Act’s switching-cost rules, finalized well before this specific AWS-Azure proceeding, already signaled that Brussels saw cloud lock-in as a distinct policy priority separate from antitrust cases against any single company’s market share.
What makes the current case different from earlier EU cloud actions is the explicit DMA framing. Previous EU cloud interventions, including the CISPE settlements, worked through complaint-driven negotiation. A DMA designation instead creates an ongoing compliance relationship, with the Commission able to monitor and enforce obligations continuously rather than waiting for a new complaint each time a dispute arises. That structural shift, more than any single fine or fee change, is what the cloud industry is watching closely.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA)?
The DMA is EU legislation that imposes behavioral obligations, including interoperability and anti-self-preferencing rules, on large digital platforms designated as “gatekeepers.” It previously covered search engines, app stores, social networks, and operating systems, not cloud infrastructure.
Have AWS and Azure already been designated as DMA gatekeepers?
Not yet, as of October 6, 2026. The European Commission issued a preliminary view on June 25, 2026 that both should be designated, and Bloomberg reported October 2, 2026 that a final decision could come as soon as November 2026.
Why is Google Cloud not part of this proceeding?
The Commission’s preliminary notice names only AWS and Azure, which it describes as the first- and second-largest cloud services in the EU. No public reporting indicates Google Cloud is currently under the same DMA gatekeeper review.
What are the current egress fees for AWS and Azure?
Public list prices cited in coverage put AWS internet data egress at roughly $0.09 per gigabyte and Azure at approximately $0.087 per gigabyte after free allowances. Actual customer pricing varies with region, volume, and contract terms.
What is the EU Data Act’s cloud-switching deadline?
January 12, 2027. From that date, cloud providers are expected to stop charging customers for switching providers, including data-egress charges specifically tied to the switching process.
What penalties could AWS or Microsoft face under the DMA?
DMA infringements carry fines of up to 10% of a company’s worldwide annual turnover for a first violation, rising to 20% for repeat violations. These are statutory maximums, and no cloud-specific fine has been imposed on either company as of October 6, 2026.
How long would AWS and Azure have to comply if designated?
Gatekeepers are generally given six months after a final designation to implement required obligations, which in this case would likely cover interoperability, customer lock-in, and self-preferencing practices.
What should enterprise IT teams do while this is unresolved?
Build flexibility into any cloud contract renewal signed before the designation is finalized, and use the prospect of regulator-mandated egress relief as a negotiating point in current pricing discussions with AWS or Azure.
