EU Court Backs Microsoft Over Edge

Technology & Law · EU Digital Markets Act

Luxembourg  |  Wednesday, September 2, 2026

The European Union's General Court has rejected a legal challenge brought by Norwegian browser maker Opera, upholding the European Commission's decision not to designate Microsoft's Edge browser as a "gatekeeper" under the bloc's Digital Markets Act (DMA). The ruling, delivered in Luxembourg on Wednesday, closes out one of the more closely watched tests of how the EU's flagship digital competition law is being applied in practice — and hands Microsoft a win in a fight that had rumbled on since early 2024.

"The General Court upholds the Commission's decision not to designate Microsoft as a gatekeeper in relation to Edge," the Luxembourg-based tribunal said in its ruling on the case, formally listed as T-357/24, Opera Norway v Commission.

What the case was actually about

The dispute traces back to a European Commission decision issued on February 12, 2024, which closed a market investigation opened under Article 17 of the DMA into three of Microsoft's core platform services: its Bing search engine, its Edge web browser, and its Microsoft Advertising service. Despite Edge meeting the DMA's quantitative user and revenue thresholds that typically trigger gatekeeper status, the Commission concluded that the browser did not constitute an "important gateway" for business users to reach end users — the qualitative test the law also requires — and therefore declined to impose gatekeeper obligations on it.

Opera, a longtime Microsoft rival in the browser market, filed suit in July 2024 seeking to have that non-designation decision annulled, arguing the Commission had misapplied Articles 3(1), 3(4) and 3(5) of the DMA. The case was notable not just for its subject matter but for its novelty: it marked the first time a third party — rather than a company directly targeted by a DMA decision — had challenged one of the Commission's gatekeeper determinations in court.

The court's reasoning

According to reporting on the judgment, the General Court found that the Commission had brought forward sufficiently substantiated arguments to demonstrate that Edge did not, in fact, constitute an important gateway in the sense the DMA requires — effectively endorsing the Commission's original technical and economic reasoning rather than second-guessing it. The ruling leaves intact the narrower, qualitative reading of "gatekeeper" status that the Commission applied when it closed its investigation back in 2024, rather than the more mechanical, thresholds-only approach Opera had argued for.

What this doesn't change

Importantly, Wednesday's ruling is a narrow one. It concerns only Edge, Bing and Microsoft Advertising — it does not touch Microsoft's status elsewhere under the DMA. The company remains formally designated as a gatekeeper in relation to two other core platform services: the Windows PC operating system and LinkedIn. Those designations, made in 2023, are what have already forced Microsoft to make a series of significant changes across the EU and European Economic Area, including allowing Windows users to uninstall Edge entirely, ending repeated pop-up prompts nudging users toward Edge as their default browser, enabling third-party search providers and news feeds on the Windows taskbar, and ensuring apps like Bing open web links in a user's actual chosen default browser rather than forcing Edge to launch.

Those Windows-level changes were unaffected by Wednesday's ruling, since they stem from Microsoft's gatekeeper status for the Windows operating system itself, not from any regulation of Edge as a standalone product.

How Opera had framed the stakes

Opera had argued forcefully in the run-up to the ruling that sparing Edge from gatekeeper duties left European users with "little choice" when accessing the internet on Windows machines, given how deeply Edge is integrated into the operating system by default. The company had previously described the Commission's original non-designation decision as "manifestly insufficient" to address the competitive dynamics at play between pre-installed, OS-bundled browsers and independent alternatives like Opera, Firefox or Vivaldi.

Case at a glance

Detail	Information
Court	General Court of the European Union (Luxembourg)
Case reference	T-357/24, Opera Norway v Commission
Challenger	Opera Norway (browser maker)
Original Commission decision date	February 12, 2024
Opera's action filed	July 11, 2024
Judgment delivered	September 2, 2026
Outcome	Commission's non-designation decision upheld; Opera's challenge dismissed
Services covered by the decision	Edge (browser), Bing (search), Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft services still designated gatekeepers	Windows PC OS, LinkedIn

What it means going forward

For Microsoft, the ruling removes a lingering legal cloud over Edge's regulatory status in Europe, at least for now — the General Court's decisions can typically be appealed to the EU's highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union, on points of law, so this may not be the final word if Opera chooses to press on. For rival browser makers, the outcome is a setback: it confirms that meeting the DMA's numerical thresholds alone isn't enough to guarantee gatekeeper regulation, and that the Commission retains meaningful discretion to weigh qualitative factors — like whether a service functions as a genuine "gateway" for business users — even for products bundled deeply into a dominant operating system. Whether that distinction proves durable, or gets revisited on appeal, will be one of the more consequential open questions in EU digital competition enforcement going forward.

Sources

• MLex — "Web browser Opera loses challenge of EU's refusal to label Edge a gatekeeper"
• The Daily Guardian / Reuters — "EU court rejects Opera challenge against EU exemption of Microsoft's Edge from DMA rules"
• Red Hot Singapore — "EU court rejects Opera challenge against EU exemption of Microsoft's Edge from DMA rules"
• Insight EU Monitoring — "EU judgment of the General Court in Case T-357/24 Opera Norway v Commission"
• EU Law Live — "General Court to hear case concerning action against Commission's Decision closing market investigation against Microsoft under the DMA"
• Windows Forum — "Opera v Commission: What the Edge DMA Judgment May Test"
• Global Competition Review — "Opera attacks European Commission's non-designation of Microsoft Edge"
• Silicon Republic — "Microsoft to stop pestering EU Windows users to choose Edge"

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