Brussels (Belgium) (AFP) – The EU on Wednesday slapped Apple and Meta with 700 million euros in fines for breaking digital competition rules, risking the wrath of US President Donald Trump. The penalties threaten to cause more tension in the already fraught relationship between the bloc and Trump, as the two sides discuss a deal to avoid his sweeping tariffs on the EU.
The European Commission fined Apple 500 million euros ($570 million) after concluding the company prevented developers from steering customers outside its App Store to access cheaper deals. The EU also fined Meta 200 million euros over its “pay or consent” system after it violated rules on the use of personal data on Facebook and Instagram. The fines are the first under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which came into effect last year, forcing the world’s biggest tech firms to open up to competition in the EU. They could rise further if Meta and Apple fail to comply within 60 days, the commission said, threatening the US giants with “periodic penalty payments”.
The EU bolstered its legal arsenal over the past two years with major twin laws, the Digital Services Act and the DMA. However, since Trump’s return to the White House, there have been concerns that the EU would shy away from enforcing them. Trump frequently lashes out at the EU over its digital laws and taxes — claiming they are “non-tariff barriers” to trade — and many tech CEOs have aligned with his administration. He has imposed 25 percent tariffs on steel, aluminium, and auto imports from the EU, which Brussels hopes he will lift after an agreement.
Antitrust commissioner Teresa Ribera said in a statement the fines “send a strong and clear message”, insisting the bloc had taken “firm but balanced enforcement action”. She denied there was any link to Trump’s trade war, telling reporters during a visit to Mexico that EU competition rules “apply equally to everyone”.
The fines — which come after the investigations began in March 2024 — also appear to be more modest than past penalties against US Big Tech. When Apple committed similar offences on its App Store, the commission slapped a 1.8 billion euro fine in March 2024 under different EU rules. The EU defended the size of the fine because the violations happened over a shorter time period since the law applied from last year.
Apple faces a litany of accusations. The EU also told Apple in preliminary findings it was in breach of the DMA — and therefore at risk of another hefty fine — for not making it easy for rivals to provide alternatives to its App Store. Apple, however, slammed the decisions and said in a statement it would appeal the fine. “Today’s announcements are yet another example of the European Commission unfairly targeting Apple in a series of decisions that are bad for the privacy and security of our users, bad for products, and force us to give away our technology for free,” the company said.
Meta accused the EU of “attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards”. “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,” said Meta’s chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican and Trump ally. The commission pushed back on his comments.
“We don’t care who owns the company. We don’t care where the company is located,” EU spokesman Thomas Regnier said. “Be it a Chinese company, be it an American company, or be it a European company, you will have to play by the rules in the European Union,” he added.
In a rare bit of good news for Apple, the EU closed its investigation over its user choice obligations after Apple complied with the DMA and made it easy to select a default browser and for users to remove pre-installed apps such as Safari.
The fine against Meta concerned its “pay for privacy” system, which has faced fierce criticism by rights defenders in Europe after its introduction in November 2023. It means users have to pay to avoid data collection, or agree to share their data with Facebook and Instagram to keep using the platforms for free. But the commission concluded Meta did not provide users a less personalised but equivalent version of the platforms and “did not allow users to exercise their right to freely consent to the combination of their personal data”.
Meta in November last year proposed a new version, which the EU is currently assessing. Separately, around 200 French media groups are taking legal action against Meta over targeted advertisements that exploited data collected from users without their consent, their lawyers said.
© 2024 AFP
