EU Court Shields Microsoft Edge from Gatekeeper Designation

The European Union's General Court has upheld the Commission's decision not to designate Microsoft Edge as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act. This ruling preserves an important feature of the DMA, which creates a presumption that large platforms are gatekeepers based on quantitative thresholds.

However, the court's decision allows the Commission to accept evidence that a particular service is not an important gateway between businesses and users. Microsoft met the DMA's size thresholds when the first gatekeeper decisions were taken, but the Commission concluded in February 2024 that Edge did not have the position required for designation.

Opera challenged this decision, arguing that the Commission had misjudged the browser's place in Microsoft's wider ecosystem and its effect on Windows distribution. However, the General Court dismissed Opera's action, leaving Edge outside the obligations of a designated core platform service.

This ruling matters to both large platforms and their smaller competitors. If meeting the thresholds led invariably to designation, the rebuttal process written into the law would have little practical value. The court has instead allowed the Commission room to assess how a service is actually used, even when it belongs to one of the world's largest technology groups.