Competition law experts Alex Stratakis, Tadeusz Gielas and Ian Hastings of Pinsent Masons said the judgments come as the DMA moves beyond its initial implementation phase into a period increasingly shaped by enforcement decisions, regulatory dialogue, and litigation. The rulings build on two earlier General Court judgments involving the DMA concerning Bytedance, the company behind TikTok.
Under the EU digital markets competition regime, technology firms that meet certain designation criteria under the DMA are deemed to be “gatekeepers” and the digital services they provide can be individually designated as a “core platform service” (CPS) under the DMA. A gatekeeper can have one or more CPS and the number of designated CPSs can change over time depending on whether the relevant DMA designation criteria continue to be met in relation to each CPS. Most gatekeepers currently have multiple CPS designations under the DMA. Every CPS designation entails specific legal obligations and increases the gatekeeper’s cumulative DMA compliance burden.
Unlike the two earlier cases where Bytedance argued that it should not have been designated as a gatekeeper under the DMA in the first place, in the latest General Court cases Meta and Apple did not dispute their gatekeeper status. Rather, they challenged specific CPS designations.
Meta challenged the Commission’s decisions to designate its Messenger and Facebook Marketplace services as two CPSs under the DMA.
The General Court upheld Meta’s CPS designation in relation to Messenger, finding that Messenger was a number-independent interpersonal communications service distinct from Facebook and that the Commission had not erred in treating it as an important gateway for business users to reach end users. The court took account of factors including that Messenger was offered through standalone applications, could be used independently of Facebook and included tools allowing businesses to engage with users.
The court annulled the Commission’s CPS designation decision in relation to Facebook Marketplace. It held that the Commission had erred by relying on data covering the three years before designation without sufficiently taking account of changes Meta had made to Facebook Marketplace shortly before the Commission’s decision was adopted. It also found that the Commission had not adequately explained how those changes affected its conclusion that Facebook Marketplace enabled business users to offer goods or services to consumers, which was necessary to classify the service as an online intermediation service under the DMA.
The Commission un-designated Facebook Marketplace before the General Court judgment was handed down, but the court found that it could still rule on the Commission’s now-withdrawn CPS designation decision because it had had legal implications for Meta.
The separate Apple judgment reached a different result. The General Court confirmed the Commission’s assessment that the different versions of Apple’s App Store constituted a single CPS for the purposes of the DMA, because they shared the same essential function of connecting app developers with end users to facilitate the distribution of software applications. It held that differences linked mainly to the characteristics of different Apple devices did not justify treating the App Store as several separate CPSs.
The General Court also ruled inadmissible Apple’s challenge of the Commission’s decision to not designate Apple’s iMessage as a CPS. The Commission had conducted a market investigation to evaluate whether the iMessage service should be designated despite it falling below the quantitative DMA designation thresholds. It then decided against making a CPS designation.
The Apple judgment also clarified the limits of what can be challenged through an appeal against a DMA designation decision. The General Court held that Apple could not use its designation challenge to attack the legality of the DMA’s interoperability obligation in Article 6(7), because that provision was neither the legal basis of the designation decision nor a rule with a direct legal connection to it. It also held that the Commission’s classification of iMessage as a number-independent interpersonal communications service did not itself alter Apple’s legal position, because iMessage had not ultimately been listed in a designation decision as an important gateway to which DMA obligations applied.
In the earlier Bytedance cases, the General Court first dismissed the TikTok owner’s challenge to its designation as a gatekeeper, confirming that the DMA’s statutory presumptions can carry significant weight where the relevant quantitative thresholds are met and are not manifestly called into question by sufficiently substantiated evidence. In the second case, the court dismissed a challenge to the Commission’s refusal to grant access to internal documents relating to Bytedance’s designation. In doing so, it underlined the procedural sensitivity of DMA designation files and the need for the Commission to give adequate reasons when refusing disclosure.
Taken together, the earlier judgments, and the recent Meta and Apple rulings, show a developing body of DMA case law that is broadly supportive of the Commission’s ability to operate the new ‘ex ante’ – that is, forward-looking – digital markets competition regime, while also highlighting certain limitations and safeguards, according to competition law experts Stratakis, Hastings and Gielas of Pinsent Masons. The court upheld the Commission’s approach in relation to TikTok, Messenger, iOS and the App Store, and has accepted that the Commission may assess CPSs under the DMA in a commercially realistic way. However, the Meta judgment also shows that the Commission’s designation decisions must still be based on a sufficiently current, CPS-specific assessment of the facts and must explain why the legal criteria are met, the experts said.
Alex Stratakis said: “The emerging DMA case law shows a regime that is being tested and scrutinised, as the regime has now been in force more than three years and is gradually maturing. The court has generally supported the Commission’s ability to apply the gatekeeper designation framework, while also making clear that designation decisions must be grounded in a careful analysis of the relevant digital service and the facts as they stand when the Commission acts.”
Ian Hastings said: “The Apple ruling is another example of the Court defending the Commission’s ability to take a function over form approach when it comes to the application of the DMA. The court here accepted that different versions of a digital service, in this case the variants of the “App store” app, can form one CPS where they perform the same essential function for developers and users. The Apple judgment therefore confirms the Commission has appreciable flexibility in defining the borders of a CPS, but on the other hand, the Meta judgment shows the Commission will have to have solid data if it wants to use this flexibility.”
The judgments also sit within a broader period of intense DMA activity. In April 2025, the Commission imposed its first non-compliance fines under the regime. Those penalty decisions are separate from the designation judgments and are themselves currently subject to challenge before the EU courts.
It remains to be seen whether the recent Meta or Apple judgments are appealed to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). The first Bytedance judgment, from 2024, was appealed to the CJEU and the hearing took place in May 2026.
The Commission’s first tri-annual review of the DMA, published earlier this year, concluded that the overall EU digital markets competition regime remains fit for purpose and that it is too early to make legislative changes. However, the Commission did identify cloud computing and AI as areas of future focus and is currently examining those areas to see how the existing framework can be applied in a more targeted manner.
The Pinsent Masons experts said the EU developments provide useful context for the UK, although the UK’s separate digital markets competition regime under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA) is structured differently. The UK regime applies to firms designated by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) as having strategic market status (SMS) in relation to specific digital activities and enables the CMA to impose tailored conduct requirements following consultation rather than applying a single list of obligations to all designated firms.
Tadeusz Gielas said: “The Meta judgment is a reminder that the DMA may be an ex ante regime, but it is not immune from conventional judicial scrutiny. The Commission has considerable discretion in applying the new regime, but it still needs to explain why the legal criteria are met, especially where a platform has changed how a service operates before designation.”
“The earlier judgments in the Bytedance cases are also important. The first of those rulings shows the significance of the DMA’s statutory presumptions once the quantitative thresholds are met, while the second underlines the procedural sensitivity of DMA designation files. The later Meta and Apple judgments build on that foundation by showing how the court is likely to scrutinise both the substance and the procedural setting of Commission decisions under the regime,” he said.
“Although the UK’s digital markets competition regime is separate and differs from the DMA in several important respects, the emerging EU case law may nonetheless be instructive for the even newer DMCCA framework. As the CMA develops its own SMS designations and conduct requirements under the DMCCA, the EU judgments highlight the importance of clear evidential reasoning and transparent engagement with platform-specific facts,” Gielas added.
Gatekeepers and businesses that depend on gatekeeper services are likely to see continued Commission enforcement though he said this will likely be tempered by growing judicial scrutiny and guidance on how the Commission should make DMA designation and enforcement decisions going forward
