To President Ursula von der Leyen.

Dear President von der Leyen,

We are the European entrepreneurs, investors, and organisations who asked for the Digital Markets Act, helped building it, and who were promised it would be enforced. We are writing because as of today, that promise is still largely unkept.

The DMA is the most ambitious tech law in the world. It took years of negotiation, cross-party consensus, and thousands of hours from people in every corner of the continent - lawyers, policy experts, parliamentarians and founders - behind a single idea: that digital markets should be open, contestable and fair. Europe turned that consensus into rules.

But a law you don't enforce is just a suggestion.

Non-compliance proceedings have now been open for well over a year; past the twelve-month benchmark the DMA itself sets in Article 29(2) for reaching a decision. Designated gatekeepers continue to self-preference their own services in breach of Article 6(5), and prevent European developers and consumers to benefit from fair and contestable digital markets. Every month of delay compounds the harm and chips away at the credibility of European rulemaking.

We know why the room went quiet. The political weather changed. Enforcement is being treated as a bargaining chip and a goodwill gesture to a government that openly calls Europe an adversary, weighed against relief on tariffs. The most effective way to deny the reports claiming that this law is being quietly traded away is simple: enforce it.

Because this was never only about technology. It is about whether Europe's rules mean anything once the pressure is on. You have rightly called Europe's digital rulebook a set of "sovereign decisions," ones that are "not in the packages of negotiation." We agree completely. But sovereignty you decline to defend is not sovereignty; it is a preference you hold until someone objects. Enforcement is what turns the word into a fact. And the timing could not matter more.

So we ask you to:

1. Use the powers the law already hands you. A gatekeeper that stalls should not be able to buy itself time. The Commission need not wait for a final ruling to act: Article 24 lets it impose interim measures, and Article 31 lets it charge for every day a breach runs on. Those powers were written for exactly this moment.
2. Keep the decision where it belongs: with the law, not the negotiating table. Give the people carrying out enforcement the independence, and the resources, to follow the evidence whatever the diplomatic weather.
3. Say when. Publish clear timelines for enforcement, so the European economy can build against a rulebook they can count on instead of an open question.

Everything is already in place. The law is written. The proceedings are running. The evidence is documented. Europe's entrepreneurs did their part - and we stand ready to support you in finishing this. What remains is a single step, and only one person can take it: you.

Finish the job.

Sincerely,
The undersigned organisations