European Commission fines Apple and Meta €700 million

European Commission determined today that Apple and Meta violated the European Digital Markets Act (DMA) and fined them a total of €700 million – €500 million for Apple and €200 million for Meta. This is also the first enforcement of this Act, which came into force on November 1, 2022, and began to be applied on May 2, 2023.

– Apple and Meta have not complied with the Digital Markets Act by implementing measures that increase the dependency of business users and consumers on their platforms. Therefore, we have taken decisive but balanced enforcement measures against both companies based on clear and predictable rules. All companies operating in the EU must follow our laws and respect European values – stated Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice-President of the EC for a clean, fair, and competitive transition.

Apple violated management rules

In accordance with the Digital Markets Act, app developers distributing their applications through Apple’s App Store should be able to inform users for free about alternative offers outside the App Store, direct them to those offers, and enable them to make purchases. The Commission found that Apple does not fulfill this obligation. Due to numerous restrictions imposed by Apple, consumers cannot fully take advantage of alternative and cheaper offers because Apple prevents app developers from directly informing consumers about such offers, according to the Commission’s statement.

Apple, on the other hand, did not prove that these restrictions are objectively necessary and proportionate, so the Commission, in addition to the monetary fine, ordered the removal of technical and commercial management restrictions.

Apple stated that this fine is ‘yet another example of the European Commission’s unfair attack’ on the company and coercion to ‘freely relinquish its technology’. They added that they plan to appeal the decision.

– We have spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users requested. Despite countless meetings, the Commission continues to shift the goals at every step – they added.

Meta in trouble again over data

Meta, on the other hand, violated the obligation under the Digital Markets Act to provide consumers with a choice of a service that uses less of their personal data. The Digital Markets Act requires that users who do not give consent must have access to a less personalized but equivalent alternative. In November 2023, Meta introduced a binary advertising model ‘consent or payment‘, under which Facebook and Instagram users in the EU could choose between giving consent for a combination of personal data for personalized advertising or paying a monthly subscription for an ad-free service.

The Commission found that this model is not in compliance with the Digital Markets Act as it did not provide users with the necessary specific choice for a service that uses less of their personal data but is otherwise identical to the ‘personalized ads’ service.

However, in November 2024, after numerous exchanges with the Commission, Meta introduced another version of the free personalized ads model, with a new option that allegedly uses less personal data for displaying ads. The Commission is currently evaluating this new option and is asking Meta to provide evidence of the performance of this new advertising model in practice.

Joel Kaplan, Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer, criticized the EU’s decision, accusing it of ‘attempting to handicap successful American companies’.

– This is not just about a monetary fine; the Commission forcing us to change our business model effectively imposes a multi-billion dollar tariff on Meta while requiring us to offer an inferior service – Kaplan added.

‘EC was not blackmailed by Trump’s threats’

All of this is happening at a time when the Trump administration is attacking the EU for what it considers ‘unfair targeting of American companies’. However, today’s decision by the Commission ‘is by no means the beginning of a tech war in response to Trump’s erratic tariff policy’, stated Anna Cavazzini from the Greens in the European Parliament, Chair of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, but is a consistent enforcement of existing EU law.

– It would be extremely concerning if the Commission further delayed procedures already outlined in the law, giving the impression that the EU was blackmailed by Trump’s threats. By the way, legal proceedings against monopolistic positions of some large tech companies are also underway in the US starting this week – Cavazzini stated.

Apple and Meta have a deadline of 60 days to pay the fine, otherwise, they face additional monetary penalties.