MEP Cynthia Ní Mhurchú (Renew) has asked the European Commission to clarify how it will assess privacy risks, set anonymisation standards, and monitor compliance for mandatory search data sharing under Article 6(11) of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The question, submitted on 9 June 2026, targets a provision requiring search engines to share query, click, and view data with qualifying competitors to boost contestability, but which also raises data protection concerns.
The MEP's three-part inquiry seeks specifics on the Commission's methodology for evaluating privacy and data protection risks from sharing large-scale search datasets; the technical criteria or benchmarks it considers appropriate for effective anonymisation to prevent re-identification; and the oversight, auditing, or compliance mechanisms it will use to verify that data recipients and providers adhere to safeguards over time. The questions reflect a push for regulatory certainty to balance DMA implementation with public trust in personal data protection.
As a written parliamentary question under Rule 144, the Commission is expected to reply within approximately six weeks. Its response will signal the Commission's approach to enforcing data-sharing obligations without compromising privacy, affecting major search engines (as data providers), smaller competitors (as recipients), and EU users whose data may be shared. The DMA, adopted in 2022, already designates gatekeepers, but Article 6(11) implementation details remain under development.
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