Brussels, 5 May 2026
Dear President von der Leyen,
We, a group of civil society organisations, are writing to express grave concern about credible reports that the European Commission has decided to delay the imposition of a fine against Google’s parent company Alphabet under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), reportedly at your personal direction.
We appreciate that such a decision has not been confirmed. Nevertheless, given that the source of these reports is Handelsblatt, a reputable German newspaper, we believe it is necessary to share our grave concerns.
According to the report, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition has found that Google violated the DMA through self-preferencing in online search and anti-steering through its Google Play Store. The Commission was reportedly planning to impose the largest fine yet under the DMA, in the single digit billions, scheduled for March 2026. You are said to have personally decided to postpone the penalties.
If true, this would further undermine European innovation, prosperity, democracy and sovereignty at a time when the stakes could not be higher. The EU’s inability to effectively tackle the market dominance of digital gatekeepers has caused significant damage to Europe’s innovators and small businesses, degraded our information environment, and further consolidated our dependence on a handful of foreign monopolists. This type of political interference perpetuates these harms and compromises the goals and the efficient enforcement of the EU’s digital rules.
Moreover, this apparent retreat comes at a moment of sustained pressure from the Trump administration, which has explicitly threatened tariffs, sanctions and other forms of coercion if the EU implements its digital laws or imposes high fines. In April 2025, you defended the EU’s digital regulations as “sovereign decisions” that are “not in the packages of negotiations”. The decision to shelve fining Google, if confirmed, would go against that commitment and encourage the US administration to push for further concessions. We therefore call on you to confirm that the DMA will be enforced in accordance with the letter of the law and free from political interference and to ensure the fine against Google is imposed without further delay.
Signed:
Organisations
- AlgorithmWatch
- ARTICLE19
- Open Markets Institute Europe
- Rebalance Now
- Foxglove
- LobbyControl
- SOMO
- People vs Big Tech
- Media Diversity Institute
- WeMove Europe
- Alliance4Europe
- Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO)
- Enforce (ICCL)
- The Citizens
- Lie Detectors
- New School of the Anthropocene
- Defend Democracy
- Association Tournesol
- Diaspora in Action for Human Rights and Democracy (DAHRD)
- Balanced Economy Project
- Innovate Europe Foundation (IE.F)
- Initiative for Neutral Search
- Check My Ads
- Association of European Journalists in Belgium (AEJ Belgium)
- European Federation of Journalists
- European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
- Society of Journalists
- Albanian Media Council
- Digitalcourage
- Digitale Gesellschaft e.V
- Reporters Without Borders
- International Press Institute
- Eurocadres
- Xnet, institute for Democratic Digitalisation
Individuals
- Nicholas Shaxson (Technology and Human Rights Fellow, Carr-Ryan Center, Harvard
- Kennedy School)
- Robin Berjon (Supramundane Agency)
- John Ozbay (Founder & CEO, Cryptee)