CFJ Op-Ed: Brussels reaches into the server racks
- Ashley Baker
- 24 hours ago
- 3 min read
Committee for Justice Executive Director Ashley Baker has published a new op-ed in The Washington Reporter warning that the European Union’s Digital Markets Act is now being stretched beyond consumer-facing platforms and into the cloud infrastructure that powers the modern digital economy.
The piece focuses on the European Commission’s effort to classify Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as DMA “gatekeepers,” even though AWS and Azure reportedly do not meet the law’s ordinary quantitative thresholds. Instead, Brussels is relying on Article 3(8), a qualitative designation tool that allows the Commission to impose gatekeeper status after a market investigation. Baker argues that this move exposes the DMA’s deeper problem: when the statutory framework does not fit, EU regulators are prepared to apply it anyway.
A Regulatory Power Grab Against American Cloud Providers
The proposed designations would impose major new compliance burdens on two leading American cloud providers while European and Chinese competitors avoid the same treatment. A group of 25 Republican lawmakers recently urged President Trump to open trade investigations into what they called the EU’s “economic extraction and regulatory coercion against American firms,” specifically citing the AWS and Azure gatekeeper proceedings.
This is not simply another dispute over “Big Tech.” Cloud infrastructure is the backbone of artificial intelligence, enterprise software, cybersecurity, data storage, and countless digital services. Treating cloud providers as static bottlenecks misunderstands a fast-moving market in which customers frequently use multiple providers, prices continue to fall, and market shares remain dynamic.
The DMA’s Gatekeeper Theory Does Not Fit Cloud Computing
The DMA was built around the idea that certain platforms act as unavoidable intermediaries between businesses and end users. But cloud providers do not function like app stores or social networks. They provide infrastructure, not consumer-facing gateways.
The op-ed points out that AWS and Azure fall below the DMA’s normal quantitative thresholds, yet the Commission is reaching for a rarely used qualitative theory to bring them under the statute anyway. It also notes that AWS has repeatedly cut prices, that cloud market shares continue to shift among AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, and that surveys show most organizations spread workloads across more than one environment—all signs of competition, not lock-in. Washington Reporter
Forced Sharing Threatens Investment and Innovation
The op-ed also connects the DMA’s cloud push to a broader concern in American antitrust law: forced sharing can undermine the incentive to invest. Once designated, AWS and Azure could face requirements related to data portability, switching, anti-self-preferencing, and other obligations, backed by fines of up to 10 percent of global turnover.
That is especially risky as U.S. technology firms are investing heavily in AI infrastructure. Baker notes that leading American technology companies are expected to spend roughly $725 billion this year, much of it on AI infrastructure. Regulating cloud services as if they were entrenched public utilities could chill the investment needed to sustain the next generation of computing.
Europe’s Innovation Problem Will Not Be Solved by Punishing U.S. Firms
The piece also underscores a familiar irony: Europe has no hyperscaler of its own, yet it is attempting to regulate the firms that built the infrastructure Europe relies upon. Baker invokes the Draghi report’s warning about Europe’s competitiveness problem, noting the contrast between Europe’s lack of new large-scale technology champions and the rise of trillion-dollar American firms. Washington Reporter
Rather than producing European competitors, the DMA has already contributed to fines, delayed product rollouts, and regulatory uncertainty. Apple, for example, has cited the DMA in delaying certain AI features for EU users.
The Bottom Line
Brussels’ attempt to pull AWS and Azure into the DMA marks a major escalation in Europe’s campaign against American technology leadership. What began as platform regulation is now reaching into the server racks that power AI and the global digital economy.
If the European Commission moves forward, the piece argues, the Trump administration should respond with a Section 301 investigation into discriminatory EU digital regulations. The United States should not allow European regulators to turn cloud infrastructure into the next front in digital protectionism.