The EU’s proposed Digital Omnibus to simplify digital regulation suggests repealing the 2019 Platform-to-Business Regulation. This poses a problem for the Digital Markets Act, which relies on the P2B-Regulation for how to define core platform services like search engines. Moving forward with the repeal will require legislators to renegotiate first the DMA, which is necessary anyways to adapt the law to the age of artificial intelligence, writes Jan-Frederick Göhsl.
Over the last decade, the European Union has built a comprehensive body of digital legislation, adopting rules that either directly or indirectly target digital markets. This began with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2016 and the Platform-to-Business-Regulation (P2B-Regulation) in 2019. More recently, the EU has adopted the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the Data Act (DA) and the Data Governance Act (DGA), ultimately followed by the Artificial Intelligence Act. The result is an opaque and partly overlapping digital rulebook.
Mario Draghi’s 2024 report on European competitiveness offered a sharp critique of the EU’s growing amount of (digital) legislation and noted that the bloc’s competitiveness was being hindered by, among other things, the regulatory complexity of this digital rulebook. This was a wake-up call for the EU Commission, which has since been keen to overhaul parts of the digital law acquis in direct response to the Draghi report. To this end, in November 2025, the EU Commission proposed a plan to simplify and consolidate its digital rulebook into the so-called Digital Omnibus. In the Digital Omnibus, the Commission suggests making targeted adjustments to the GDPR, consolidating the Data Governance Act into the Data Act, and rewriting some parts of the AI Act that have proven to be rather unworkable and innovation-stifling in their current form.
How the Digital Omnibus may affect the DMA
At first glance, the Digital Omnibus appears to be unrelated to the DMA, the EU’s main law to maintain competition and fairness in digital markets. Indeed, the Commission intends to evaluate how the DMA has performed separately, as it is due to in May 2026, which could result in a distinct legislative procedure. However, closer inspection reveals that the Digital Omnibus could be highly relevant to the future of the DMA. Specifically, at the end of the Digital Omnibus proposal, the Commission briefly suggests repealing the P2B-Regulation, which is perceived to have little practical relevance in the shadow of the DSA and the DMA. Consequently, the Commission argues that the DSA rendered large parts of the P2B-Regulation redundant, making it an obvious candidate for deregulation.
However, repeal of the P2B-Regulation would have a significant, albeit indirect, impact on the DMA. In its current form, Article 2 of the DMA not only includes a comprehensive list of the core platform services requiring regulation, but also defines them. Rather than attempting to re-invent the definitional wheel for each of these core platform services, the DMA largely relies on definitions already established in other EU legislation. In particular, it incorporates the definitions of “online intermediation services” and “online search engines” directly from the P2B-Regulation (Articles 2(5) and 2(6)). Consequently, repealing the P2B-Regulation would remove some of the DMA’s operating definitions, forcing EU legislators to address the arising gaps. Therefore, repealing the P2B-Regulation will also require reopening negotiations on the DMA.
Current loopholes in the DMA and an unexpected opportunity
This necessity gives the EU the strategic opportunity to update the definitions of these core platform services, ensuring they are future-proof in the context of AI-driven services. Currently, there is a risk that they are not suitable for new AI-driven business models. Two existing gaps in the DMA highlight this issue.
At the moment, the definition of “online intermediation services” requires a triangular contractual relationship. In order to fall within the scope of the definition, a platform service must facilitate direct transactions between business users and consumers, which requires contractual relationships between the platform and both sides of the market. This means that the consumer must have a contract with the platform provider, as must the business user. Agentic AI services do not necessarily fulfil this requirement. Unlike traditional platform services, AI agents have the potential to act autonomously on behalf of consumers or business users. For example, the provider of an AI shopping agent does not necessarily need to enter into a contract with a retailer, since the AI agent can navigate the web autonomously, visit the retailer’s website and conclude a contract on the consumer’s behalf. While AI agents have the potential to render some online intermediary platform business models obsolete by replacing intermediation with agency, they currently do not qualify as core platform services (see here for in-depth analysis on the matter).
A similar gap exists for “online search engines”. The current definition particularly relies on referencing third-party websites, which search engines traditionally did through an indexed display. AI-driven answer engines, such as ChatGPT, do not necessarily fall under this definition if they generate their answers solely through probabilistic inference. Unless these services provide explicit references to online sources, they escape the DMA’s definition of an “online search engine” (see here for in-depth analysis on the matter).
In this respect, the potential repeal of the P2B-Regulation provides an unexpected chance to future-proof the DMA for AI-driven business models. As the definitions of “online intermediation services” and “online search engines” need to be amended anyway to fill the potential void left by the P2B-Regulation, EU legislators could also take this opportunity to adapt them to AI-driven business models.
New policy options
A comprehensive standalone revision of the DMA has so far been deemed politically challenging. Due to regulatory fatigue and polarized views both within and outside the EU, there is a risk of uncertain outcomes. Interest groups on all sides could be poised to renegotiate the DMA’s core values.
However, the Digital Omnibus provides a more viable option. By incorporating targeted adjustments to the DMA into a broader package focusing on simplification, deregulation, and competitiveness, the Commission has substantially more leeway to present these changes as technical adjustments rather than as amendments leading to substantive expansion.
In a political climate where EU member states are sceptical of additional regulation and are instead calling for significant deregulation, the Digital Omnibus is likely to be approved. It may therefore be strategically sensible to piggyback some necessary updates to the DMA onto this legislative procedure rather than initiating a separate legislative process. Of course, there is also a chance that the necessary amendments to the DMA could hinder negotiations on the Digital Omnibus or even jeopardise consensus on the package as a whole. However, if these changes are well tailored, the risk seems to be quite low. It would be negligent of the Commission to miss this opportunity to prepare the DMA for AI-driven disruption in such a minimally invasive way.
Beyond all strategic considerations, the consequences of repealing the P2B-Regulation are clear: this would require an amendment of the DMA to prevent a regulatory void. This interdependency has been notably overlooked in the current debate on the Digital Omnibus. Repealing the P2B-Regulation would give the Commission significant political leverage to update the DMA’s definitions of core platform services, as this would then be a matter of necessity rather than a political choice. Taking this approach seems to be a safer way to modernize and future-proof the DMA than relying on a standalone legislative procedure. If implemented properly, this technical fix could be one of the most significant, albeit least noticed, achievements of the Digital Omnibus.
Author Disclosure: The author reports no conflicts of interest. You can read our disclosure policy here.
Articles represent the opinions of their writers, not necessarily those of the University of Chicago, the Booth School of Business, or its faculty.
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