EU Commissioner for Digital Affairs Henna Virkkunen announced in a speech in Berlin that a review is underway into whether the two companies should be defined as "gatekeepers" when it comes to cloud services, according to the EU's Data Protection Act, DMA.
The definition would mean greater demands on opening up their services to other players. However, at least Amazon believes that their web service, AWS, is already sufficiently open.
Defining cloud providers as gatekeepers is not worth the risk of stifling innovation or increasing costs for European companies, an AWS spokesperson said, according to the AFP news agency.
Virkkunen's speech comes just ahead of promised new proposals from the European Commission on Wednesday on regulatory simplification in the digital area. The EU has recently been under heavy pressure from US internet giants and President Donald Trump, who believe the EU has gone too far in its attempts to regulate the conditions on the internet.
