More than half of EU businesses run on cloud services. Brussels just decided that’s a problem worth regulating. On June 25, 2026, the European Commission published its preliminary position: Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure should be designated “gatekeepers” under the Digital Markets Act. Think of it as being labeled a digital toll road — an unavoidable chokepoint between businesses and their customers. The kicker? This isn’t just about servers and storage. AI sits at the dead center of the Commission’s argument.
Why Cloud, Why Now
The Commission argues lock-in and switching costs justify gatekeeper status even though AWS and Azure miss the DMA’s standard user thresholds.
Migrating off a major cloud provider is like trying to cancel a streaming subscription designed by a team of behavioral psychologists — technically possible, practically agonizing. The Commission calls this “high switching costs and lock-in effects.” AWS ranks as the largest cloud provider in the EU; Azure is the second-largest. Neither meets the DMA’s quantitative user thresholds, but the Commission argues their turnover, investment scale, and entrenched market position justify designation through qualitative assessment. Google Cloud, notably, gets a pass for now.
If designation is confirmed, obligations include:
- No self-preferencing their own services over competitors
- Interoperability requirements for rivals and customers
- Data portability so businesses can actually leave
- Non-compliance fines up to 10% of global annual turnover (20% for repeat offenses, per Reuters)
- A six-month compliance window once formal designation is confirmed
“Have vast and entrenched user bases and appear to benefit from lock-in effects and high switching costs, in addition to a large ecosystem.” — European Commission preliminary findings on AWS and Azure
The AI Wrinkle – and the Pushback
Brussels explicitly flags AI tool bundling as a competition concern, while both companies push back with sharply different arguments.
Here’s where it gets sharper. The Commission states that AI portfolios and partnerships have become “a decisive factor in cloud procurement,” and that AWS and Azure appear to capture the surge in AI infrastructure demand within their own ecosystems. For European businesses deploying managed LLMs, GPU instances, or proprietary AI pipelines on either platform, tightly bundled AI-cloud offerings could face new interoperability obligations. The compliance landscape is shifting.
Neither company is staying quiet. Amazon argues that applying DMA rules to cloud could undermine Europe’s competitiveness — a familiar playbook from Big Tech regulation fights, according to The Register. Microsoft takes a different angle, questioning why Google Cloud and Gemini escape the same scrutiny, suggesting the market is more dynamic than the Commission’s “entrenched” framing implies. Both companies can respond in writing to the preliminary findings before any formal designation is issued.
This remains a preliminary position — not a final ruling. But the direction is clear. If designation is confirmed, AWS and Azure have six months to restructure parts of their EU cloud operations. For any European CTO or developer team building on these platforms, the rules of the road are about to look very different.
