A commitment procedure is the way a competition authority closes an investigation by accepting promises from the company under suspicion instead of proving a breach of the law. In the European Union the legal basis is Article 9 of Regulation 1/2003. The company offers to change its conduct, the European Commission tests the offer on the market, and a decision then makes those promises legally binding. No fine is imposed and no infringement is found. The procedure exists because proving an abuse of dominance can take most of a decade, while a negotiated fix can reach the market in months. Most of the large platform cases that shaped online advertising, from Amazon's Buy Box to Microsoft's Teams, ended this way.

How a case moves from suspicion to binding promises

The process sits inside an ordinary antitrust investigation under Article 101 (anticompetitive agreements) or Article 102 (abuse of a dominant position) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). It runs in four steps.

Preliminary assessment. The Commission first sets out its competition concerns, either in a Statement of Objections or in a shorter document called a preliminary assessment. Article 9(1) ties the procedure to this moment: commitments must "meet the concerns expressed to them by the Commission in its preliminary assessment".

The offer. The company then proposes remedies. These are usually behavioural - a change to ranking rules, pricing, data use or interoperability - though structural commitments, such as selling a business, are permitted. Offers usually come with a fixed duration and a monitoring trustee, an independent party paid by the company to check compliance.

The market test. Article 27(4) requires the Commission to publish "a concise summary of the case and the main content of the commitments" and to give interested third parties at least one month to comment. Rivals and customers use the window to argue the offer is too weak or easy to circumvent, and offers are often revised after it.

Decision. After consulting national authorities in an Advisory Committee, the Commission adopts a decision making the commitments binding, usually for a set period, and concluding that "there are no longer grounds for action". Recital 13 of the regulation states that such decisions "should find that there are no longer grounds for action by the Commission without concluding whether or not there has been or still is an infringement".

What gives the promise force is the enforcement machinery behind it. Article 23(2)(c) allows a fine of up to 10% of total worldwide turnover for failing to comply with a commitment, and Article 24(1)(c) allows periodic penalty payments of up to 5% of average daily turnover. Article 9(2) lets the Commission reopen the case if facts change materially, if the company acts contrary to its commitments, or if the decision rested on incomplete, incorrect or misleading information.

Recital 13 also sets a limit. Commitment decisions are "not appropriate in cases where the Commission intends to impose a fine", which in practice keeps hardcore cartels out of the procedure.

Origin and evolution

Before 2004 the Commission closed some cases informally after companies changed their behaviour, but such undertakings could not be enforced. Regulation 1/2003, adopted on December 16, 2002 and applicable from May 1, 2004, created Article 9 as part of a wider shift that ended the old system of notifying agreements to Brussels for clearance.

The first Article 9 decisions came in 2005. Cases on the joint selling of German Bundesliga media rights and on Coca-Cola's exclusivity and rebate practices were among the earliest. The tool moved into technology markets in December 2009, when the Commission made binding Microsoft's offer to show Windows users in Europe a browser choice screen. From March 2010 users with Internet Explorer as default saw a ballot listing 12 browsers.

That case also produced the first test of enforcement. Microsoft failed to display the screen to some 15 million Windows 7 users between May 2011 and July 2012, and on March 6, 2013 the Commission fined it EUR561 million for breaching the commitments, according to the Commission.

The Court of Justice defined the procedure's legal limits in the Alrosa judgment of June 29, 2010 (C-441/07 P). The General Court had annulled a commitment decision because the Commission had not shown that a less onerous remedy would not suffice. The Court of Justice reversed it, holding that the proportionality test under Article 9 is lighter than the one applied to imposed remedies under Article 7. Critics argue this lets the Commission obtain remedies it could not impose after a contested case.

Other regimes copied the design. In the United Kingdom, section 31A of the Competition Act 1998 allows the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to accept commitments. In Germany, section 32b of the Act against Restraints of Competition (GWB) does the same for the Bundeskartellamt, and France's Autorité de la concurrence uses a similar procedure under its Commercial Code. The Digital Services Act (DSA) added Article 71 commitments for very large platforms, and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) allows binding commitments in Article 25, but only inside a market investigation into systematic non-compliance.

Why it matters for advertisers and publishers

For the marketing community, commitment decisions have quietly written many of the rules on the platforms that sell attention. On December 20, 2022 the Commission accepted Amazon's commitments to rank all sellers equally in the Buy Box, to show a second competing offer when it differs sufficiently on price or delivery, and not to use sellers' non-public data in its retail business. The decision followed two investigations opened in 2019 and 2020 and, according to the Commission, the Buy Box and Prime commitments run for seven years.

The Microsoft Teams case followed the same path. After a Slack complaint in July 2020 and a Statement of Objections in June 2024, the Commission made Microsoft's commitments binding in September 2025, requiring Office suites to be sold without Teams at a lower price and improving interoperability for rival tools, according to the Commission.

National authorities have used the tool on advertising directly. The CMA accepted Google's Privacy Sandbox commitments in February 2022 giving it oversight of how Chrome would replace third-party cookies. After Google dropped most of the project, the CMA released those commitments in October 2025. In France, the Autorité made Google's commitments on press publishers' related rights binding on June 21, 2022, under decision 22-D-13.

The most recent advertising case is German. On August 13, 2026 the Bundeskartellamt accepted Apple's commitments to redesign its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) prompt, binding for seven years and without a fine.

Criticisms and open disputes

The first objection is the absence of precedent. Because a commitment decision never finds an infringement, it adds little to case law. Critics, including participants in a 2016 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) roundtable on commitment decisions, argue that digital competition policy is being set through negotiated texts rather than judgments.

The second objection concerns victims. A final infringement decision binds national courts in follow-on damages claims, and Article 9 of the EU Damages Directive (2014/104/EU) gives national decisions similar weight. A commitment decision does neither. Claimants must prove the infringement themselves.

Third, enforcement depends on monitoring. Trustees are paid by the company they monitor, and the Commission rarely publishes their reports. Outside the 2013 Microsoft fine, breaches have seldom been sanctioned in public.

Fourth, speed is relative. The Amazon commitments came three years after the first investigation opened, although the contested Google Shopping case, opened in 2010, was only upheld by the Court of Justice in September 2024.

The European Commission has itself reopened the question. Its July 10, 2025 call for evidence on revising Regulation 1/2003 asked whether procedures, including commitments, deliver results quickly enough. No legislative proposal to revise the regulation had been found as of November 2026.

Commitment procedure and adjacent terms

Infringement decision (Article 7). The contested route. The Commission proves a breach, can impose a fine and order remedies. The EUR2.95 billion ad tech fine of September 2025 was an Article 7 decision. Google's later proposal of behavioural changes instead of divestiture was a response to that infringement finding, not an Article 9 offer, even though the press widely described it as a set of commitments.

Merger remedies. Under the EU Merger Regulation, companies also offer "commitments", but to clear a transaction rather than to close an investigation into past conduct. The UK equivalents are undertakings in lieu of a reference.

Consent decree. The United States counterpart is a court-entered settlement or a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) consent order. It is approved by a judge or agency rather than adopted by the regulator alone, and usually also contains no admission of liability.

Settlement procedure. The EU's cartel route, in which companies admit wrongdoing and receive a 10% fine reduction. Commitments involve no admission and no fine.

Recent developments

The procedure remains the Commission's default for platform cases where speed matters more than precedent. On July 9, 2026 the Commission made binding SAP's commitments in an investigation into support services for its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, according to a report of the Commission decision.

The tool is also spreading into newer digital laws. The AI Office gained the power to accept binding commitments under new Articles 75a to 75d of the AI Act, added by the Digital Omnibus on AI in 2026.

The DMA marks the limit. Gatekeepers facing non-compliance proceedings under Article 29 cannot settle through commitments, which is why Meta's changes to its personalised advertising model after its EUR200 million fine of April 2025 were handled as compliance follow-up rather than as a formal commitments decision. Whether the review of Regulation 1/2003 will tighten or widen Article 9 remains open.

Timeline

  • December 16, 2002 - Regulation 1/2003 adopted, creating Article 9 commitment decisions
  • May 1, 2004 - Regulation 1/2003 applies
  • 2005 - First Article 9 decisions, including German Bundesliga media rights and Coca-Cola
  • December 16, 2009 - Commission makes Microsoft's browser choice screen commitments binding
  • June 29, 2010 - Court of Justice rules in Alrosa (C-441/07 P) that Article 9 needs a lighter proportionality test
  • March 6, 2013 - Microsoft fined EUR561 million for breaching its browser commitments
  • February 2022 - CMA accepts Google's Privacy Sandbox commitments
  • June 21, 2022 - Autorité de la concurrence makes Google's related rights commitments binding (22-D-13)
  • December 20, 2022 - Commission accepts Amazon's Buy Box, second-offer and seller-data commitments
  • August 2024 - First DSA commitments decision, closing the TikTok Lite rewards case
  • July 10, 2025 - Commission call for evidence on revising Regulation 1/2003
  • September 2025 - Commission makes Microsoft's Teams commitments binding
  • October 2025 - CMA releases Google's Privacy Sandbox commitments
  • July 9, 2026 - Commission makes SAP's ERP support commitments binding
  • August 13, 2026 - Bundeskartellamt accepts Apple's ATT commitments, binding for seven years

Summary

Who: The European Commission under Article 9 of Regulation 1/2003, national authorities such as the CMA, the Bundeskartellamt and the Autorité de la concurrence under their own laws, and the companies they investigate, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and SAP. Rivals and customers take part through the market test.

What: A procedure that closes an antitrust investigation by making a company's offered remedies legally binding, with no fine and no finding of infringement. Breaches can bring fines of up to 10% of worldwide turnover.

When: Created by Regulation 1/2003, applicable since May 1, 2004. Used from 2005, tested in court in Alrosa in 2010, enforced against Microsoft in 2013, and applied to Amazon in 2022, Microsoft Teams in 2025, and SAP and Apple in 2026.

Where: The European Union, with equivalent procedures in the United Kingdom, Germany, France and other member states, and in the DSA, the DMA's market investigations and the amended AI Act.

Why: Contested abuse cases take years and end in court. Commitments trade a formal finding for a faster fix, at the cost of precedent, transparency and easier damages claims for those harmed.