Amazon and Microsoft may soon face tougher EU competition measures, as Brussels launches investigations into their dominance in cloud services.

European Commission Tech Chief, Henna Virkkunen, said the parallel probes will determine whether the two companies “should be designated as gatekeepers in cloud computing,” speaking Tuesday at a summit in Berlin on strengthening Europe’s digital sovereignty.

The EU has opened investigations to determine whether Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft’s Azure should fall under the Digital Markets Act.

The regulator said it will assess whether the two firms “act as important gateways between businesses and consumers, despite not meeting the DMA’s thresholds for size, user numbers and market position.”

Brussels aims to conclude the probes within a year.

“We’re confident that when the European Commission considers the facts, it will recognise what we all see – the cloud computing sector is extremely dynamic, with companies enjoying lots of choice, unprecedented innovation opportunity, and low costs, and that designating cloud providers as gatekeepers isn’t worth the risks of stifling invention or raising costs for European companies,” an AWS spokesperson said.

The DMA forms a key part of the EU’s strengthened regulatory toolkit aimed at ensuring a fairer digital market, setting out clear obligations and restrictions for Big Tech.

It requires major platforms to give users genuine alternatives, for instance, allowing them to choose different web browsers or search engines through “choice screens.”

The law empowers Brussels to levy fines of up to 10 per cent of a company’s global annual revenue for violations.

EU officials have faced mounting pressure to bring the targeted cloud services under the DMA, given that US providers currently control roughly two-thirds of the cloud market across the 27-member bloc.

AWS remains the dominant player in the cloud market, with Microsoft Azure close behind and Google Cloud in third place, though Google is not part of the EU’s current probe.

Concerns around cloud reliability have also intensified following a series of high-profile outages.

In October, Microsoft’s cloud customers suffered major disruptions, including Alaska Airlines, which was unable to check in passengers.

Just weeks earlier, an Amazon cloud outage knocked several popular streaming and messaging services offline for hours.