DMA gatekeeper designation Article 3 and Form GD guide

Start with the three cumulative Article 3(1) requirements: significant impact on the internal market, an important gateway core platform service, and an entrenched and durable position or a foreseeable near-term position. Article 3(2) then creates quantitative presumptions for those requirements.

For internal-market impact, check whether the undertaking achieved annual Union turnover of at least EUR 7.5 billion in each of the last three financial years, or whether its average market capitalisation or equivalent fair market value was at least EUR 75 billion in the last financial year, and whether it provides the same core platform service in at least three Member States. For the gateway presumption, check whether the relevant core platform service had at least 45 million monthly active end users established or located in the Union and at least 10,000 yearly active business users established in the Union in the last financial year. For durability, check whether those user thresholds were met in each of the last three financial years.

Designation work should be scoped at the core platform service level because Article 3(9) requires the Commission to list the relevant core platform services in the designation decision. The DMA Annex also makes the undertaking responsible for the completeness and accuracy of active end-user and active business-user data submitted under Article 3(3).

Avoid collapsing distinct services merely because they share infrastructure, brand, accounts, domains, or data pipelines. The Annex says services in the same core-platform-service category should not be split mainly by domain names or geography, but services used for different purposes by end users or business users should be treated as distinct, including when provided in an integrated way.

When all Article 3(2) thresholds are met, Article 3(3) requires notification to the Commission without delay and in any event within two months after the thresholds are met. Regulation (EU) 2023/814 requires Article 3(3) notifications to contain all information and documents indicated in Form GD, and the information must be correct, complete, not misleading, clear, well structured, and intelligible.

The Commission's DMA legislation page adds practical routing: submit Form GD and any needed Power of Attorney through eTrustex with relevant DMA case numbers, copy EC-DMA@ec.europa.eu and the relevant CPS mailing lists, and use the subject 'DMA Form GD' if case numbers have not been received. The practical information page states that digital Form GD notifications and Power of Attorney documents must use at least one Qualified Electronic Signature; scanned signatures and non-QES advanced signatures are not accepted.

A threshold hit does not automatically end the analysis. Article 3(5) allows the undertaking to submit sufficiently substantiated arguments showing that, exceptionally, although it meets all Article 3(2) thresholds, the relevant core platform service does not satisfy one or more Article 3(1) requirements because of the circumstances in which that service operates.

Regulation (EU) 2023/814 makes the rebuttal operational: arguments must be provided in an annex to the notification, a separate annex is required for each distinct core platform service, and each argument must identify which of the three Article 3(1) requirements it addresses. If the Commission considers the arguments not sufficiently substantiated because they do not manifestly call the Article 3(2) presumptions into question, it may reject them within the Article 3(4) timeframe.

After complete Article 3(3) information is received, Article 3(4) requires the Commission to designate a qualifying undertaking without undue delay and at the latest within 45 working days. The designation decision lists the relevant core platform services under Article 3(9), and Article 3(10) gives the gatekeeper six months after a core platform service is listed to comply with Articles 5, 6, and 7.

Article 11 readiness should start before designation is final. The Commission's Article 11 template says every gatekeeper must provide, within six months after designation, a detailed and transparent compliance report and a non-confidential summary, and update the report at least annually. The template asks for separate standalone annexes for each designated core platform service and for each applicable Article 5 to 7 obligation, including measures, supporting data, internal documents, implementation timing, technical changes, customer-experience changes, and reasons when an obligation cannot by nature apply to a relevant CPS.