European Union regulators hit Apple and Meta with fines totaling hundreds of millions of euros for violating the Digital Markets Act — the first time sanctions have been imposed on tech companies under new rules aimed at promoting competition for online services.
The European Commission fined Apple 500 million euros ($568 million) and Meta 200 million euros ($227 million), saying that Apple kept customers away from options outside of the company’s App Store and that Meta had forced European users for several months to pay a monthly subscription if they did not consent to the company using personal data for targeted advertisements.
Apple and Meta must comply with the commission’s decisions within 60 days or “risk periodic penalty payments,” the commission said.
Meta Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan responded in a statement, arguing that the commission was trying to “handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards.”
“This isn’t just about a 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 said.
Apple said in a statement provided to The Associated Press that it has “spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users have asked for."
“Despite countless meetings, the Commission continues to move the goalposts every step of the way," the company said.
Both Apple and Meta indicated they would appeal the fines.
The investigations into Apple and Meta began in March 2024, and the commission notified both companies within several months that they were in breach of the Digital Markets Act.
Apple prevented developers from freely letting consumers know about “alternative and cheaper offers” outside of its App Store, the regulators found, ordering the company to “remove the technical and commercial restrictions on steering and to refrain from perpetuating the non-compliant conduct in the future.”
The commission — the executive body for the 27 European Union member countries — noted that it is currently reviewing an update Meta made to its “consent or pay” system in November 2024, which Meta says uses less personal data to display advertisements.
The European body specified that Meta’s fine accounted for about eight months of noncompliance beginning in March 2024, when the Digital Markets Act went into effect for tech “gatekeepers” – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft.
“Apple and Meta have fallen short of compliance with the DMA by implementing measures that reinforce the dependence of business users and consumers on their platforms,” Teresa Ribera, one of the commission’s executive vice-presidents, said in the statement. “As a result, we have taken firm but balanced enforcement action against both companies, based on clear and predictable rules.”
“Non-compliant companies” could face fines of up to 10% of their global annual revenue, meaning penalties for Apple and Meta could have been in the billions of dollars.
The commission also noted that it was closing a separate investigation into Apple after the company made changes to allow users to more easily uninstall apps and to streamline the steps taken to choose a default browser and change default settings.
The Associated Press contributed to this reporting.
