Mission Statement of the AIMII - June 2025

From well intended Rules to concrete Results: Unlocking the Power of the DMA and AI Act for European SMEs

The AI-enabled Market Integrity Initiative (AIMII) is an association of European digital SMEs enterprises and its ecosystem brought together by the genuine desire and aim to link Fair Markets with AI innovation. AIMII is looking to create trust around a collaborative platform in order to engage in a constructive and direct dialogue with different stakeholders, including gatekeepers, such as Alphabet or Microsoft, European governments as well as the European Commission. Its aim is to ensure mid-sized European companies can innovate, compete fairly, and thrive within the European Digital Markets. If they succeed, then the DMA will too.

The rise of Generative AI (i.e. the rollout of AIO) is transforming various industries and creating growth opportunities for companies of all sizes. However, AI is also impacting different digital services and levels of the AI supply chain that are deemed crucial for the growth of European SMEs, such as clouds.

There is a risk that we may face the emergence of new bottlenecks or further entrench existing gatekeepers. Search engines, in particular, serve as critical gateways for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to reach users and markets. The integration of artificial intelligence into online search - within a market overwhelmingly dominated by Google, which accounts for over 90% of the global market share, especially on mobile devices - raises significant concerns regarding competition and market access. As generative AI reshapes the way users seek and interact with information, mid-sized digital companies are likely to face increasing barriers to maintaining visibility and securing market share.

Big Tech companies clearly have lots of incentives for self-preferencing their own AI models on their own platforms. Google has integrated its proprietary Generative AI tool, AIO–powered by its Gemini2 large language model (LLM) – into its search results, placing AI-generated answers prominently at the top of the page. This displaces third-party content, raising concerns about fairness and competition as studies have shown that "the presence of an AI overview in the search results correlates with a 34.5% lower average clickthrough rate".

The European Union has just published its EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy, which aims at helping startups become well-established mid-sized companies in the European Union. While we support this Strategy, we believe it is of the utmost importance to make sure that these companies have a smooth regulatory ecosystem to rely on, once they scale up.

The AI Act of the EU seeks specific support measures to help European AI developers scale within the EU market under a clear legal framework and to reduce dependence on dominant non-European tech platforms and foster digital sovereignty.

European SMEs are ready to further invest in AI and expand into new markets. However, to fully seize these opportunities, they need legal certainty that the Digital Markets Act (DMA) will effectively address structural bottlenecks and remove the gatekeeping barriers that currently hinder their growth.

This is precisely what AIMII aims to achieve: build trust and bring practical cases - such as the AIO example - to the table to illustrate where the DMA could be applied, and foster a constructive and solution-oriented dialogue among stakeholders, gatekeepers, and the Commission.

In parallel, AIMII also seeks to establish a constructive dialogue based on trust and respect with the Commission on the implementation of the AI Act. The objective is to identify the main compliance challenges that SMEs face, such as risk classifications, and to work collaboratively on solutions to overcome them. The ultimate goal is to ensure that European SMEs can develop and deploy trustworthy AI products that are fully aligned with EU rules and values while taking into account the specific limited resources that SMEs have at their disposal.

Part of running a successful business is not only to anticipate and understand market dynamics, but also to identify opportunities and know how to harness them. This requires more than observation - it calls for active engagement. SMEs should take part in the dialogue with stakeholders, including gatekeepers and the Commission, to help shape practical workable solutions. This is the most effective path to overcoming barriers and unlocking fair and sustainable growth for all players.