DMA compliance costs EU businesses €114B annually, Milton Friedman Institute warns

The report highlights a widening 'innovation deficit' where prescriptive EU regulations are forcing tech giants to tier their product launches, leaving European businesses and consumers with degraded service functionality. For the streaming and advertising ecosystem, the estimated €8.5 billion loss in ad personalization revenue signifies a direct hit to the monetization models of local platforms and publishers. This suggests that while the DMA aimed to open markets, the immediate technical and legal friction is actually incentivizing capital flight to more 'business-friendly' jurisdictions like the UAE. Watch for the European Commission’s next review cycle to see if it reconciles these losses with the Pro-Competitiveness recommendations from the Draghi Report.

The tension between the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and technological progress has reached a flashpoint with Apple’s high-profile decision in June 2026 to withhold 'Siri AI' from European iPhone and iPad users. Per Apple and external industry reports, the company claims the DMA’s interoperability requirements would force it to grant third-party AI assistants 'nearly unlimited access' to system-level data, creating unmanageable security risks. While the EU’s General Court recently upheld Apple’s designation as a 'gatekeeper' in July 2026, the company continues to maintain that its proposed 'Trusted System Agent' framework—a compromise to allow safe third-party access—was unfairly rejected by the European Commission.

This regulatory friction contradicts the findings of the 2024 Draghi Report, which warned that Europe is failing to convert its structural strengths into competitive global industries. According to the first audit by the Draghi Observatory in late 2025, the EU has fully implemented only about 11% of the report’s 383 recommendations for boosting competitiveness. While Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has integrated a 'Competitiveness Compass' into the 2024–2029 work program, the Milton Friedman Institute's data suggests that legacy regulations like the DMA are currently moving the needle in the opposite direction.

As of July 2026, the European Commission has designated 23 products from seven gatekeepers—including Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft—as core platform services. The impact of these designations is already appearing in enforcement actions; per Forbes, Google was handed an €890 million fine in July 2026 for self-preferencing in search results and restrictive Play Store policies. For digital marketing and streaming firms, the 'rearranged shelf' forced by these rulings means a mandatory shift in attribution and user acquisition strategies across the single market.