Art. 12 Updating obligations for gatekeepers | DMA regulation | DMA

This article grants the Commission the power to adopt delegated acts to keep the core gatekeeper obligations in Articles 5, 6, and 7 up to date.

Rather than setting new obligations from scratch, the Commission can use these delegated acts to adapt and extend existing ones — for example, by broadening their scope to cover additional services, data types, or user groups.

Crucially, any such delegated act must be grounded in a market investigation conducted under Article 19, ensuring that the power to update obligations is evidence-based rather than discretionary.

The article also defines what qualifies as a practice that limits contestability or is unfair, providing the threshold that triggers the use of these delegated powers.

Important points:

The Commission is empowered to extend or specify existing obligations under Articles 5, 6, and 7 through delegated acts, but cannot use this power to create entirely new categories of obligation.
Any delegated act must be based on a prior market investigation under Article 19 that has identified the need for the update.
A practice qualifies as limiting contestability or being unfair where it impedes innovation or limits choice by creating barriers to entry, denying access to key inputs, or where gatekeepers obtain a disproportionate advantage from business users.

1. The Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 49 to supplement this Regulation with regard to the obligations laid down in Articles 5 and 6. Those delegated acts shall be based on a market investigation pursuant to Article 19 that has identified the need to keep those obligations up to date in order to address practices that limit the contestability of core platform services or that are unfair in the same way as the practices addressed by the obligations laid down in Articles 5 and 6.
1. The scope of a delegated act adopted in accordance with paragraph 1 shall be limited to:
  1. extending an obligation that applies only in relation to certain core platform services, to other core platform services listed in Article 2, point (2);
  2. extending an obligation that benefits certain business users or end users so that it benefits other business users or end users;
  3. specifying the manner in which the obligations laid down in Articles 5 and 6 are to be performed by gatekeepers in order to ensure effective compliance with those obligations;
  4. extending an obligation that applies only in relation to certain services provided together with, or in support of, core platform services to other services provided together with, or in support of, core platform services;
  5. extending an obligation that applies only in relation to certain types of data to apply in relation to other types of data;
  6. adding further conditions where an obligation imposes certain conditions on the behaviour of a gatekeeper; or
  7. applying an obligation that governs the relationship between several core platform services of the gatekeeper to the relationship between a core platform service and other services of the gatekeeper.
1. The Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 49 to amend this Regulation with regard to the list of basic functionalities identified in Article 7(2), by adding or removing functionalities of number-independent interpersonal communications services.
2. Those delegated acts shall be based on a market investigation pursuant to Article 19 that has identified the need to keep those obligations up to date in order to address practices that limit the contestability of core platform services or that are unfair in the same way as the practices addressed by the obligations laid down in Article 7.
1. The Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 49 to supplement this Regulation in respect of the obligations in Article 7 by specifying the manner in which those obligations are to be performed in order to ensure effective compliance with those obligations. Those delegated acts shall be based on a market investigation pursuant to Article 19, which has identified the need to keep those obligations up to date in order to address practices that limit the contestability of core platform services or that are unfair in the same way as the practices addressed by the obligations laid down in Article 7.
1. A practice as referred to in paragraphs 1, 3 and 4 shall be considered to limit the contestability of core platform services or to be unfair where:
  1. that practice is engaged in by gatekeepers and is capable of impeding innovation and limiting choice for business users and end users because it:
    affects or risks affecting the contestability of a core platform service or other services in the digital sector on a lasting basis due to the creation or strengthening of barriers to entry for other undertakings or to expand as providers of a core platform service or other services in the digital sector; or
    prevents other operators from having the same access to a key input as the gatekeeper; or
  2. there is an imbalance between the rights and obligations of business users and the gatekeeper obtains an advantage from business users that is disproportionate to the service provided by that gatekeeper to those business users.