EU fines Apple 500M euros, Meta 200M euros for breaking competition rules

The Associated Press

· Posted: Apr 23, 2025 9:30 AM EDT | Last Updated: 9 minutes ago

European Union watchdogs fined Apple and Meta hundreds of millions of euros on Wednesday successful 2 abstracted cases arsenic they stepped up enforcement of the 27-nation bloc's integer contention rules.

The European Commission imposed a 500-million euro ($571-million Cdn) good connected Apple for preventing app makers from pointing users to cheaper options extracurricular its App Store.

The commission, which is the EU's enforcement arm, besides fined Meta Platforms 200 cardinal euros ($315 million) due to the fact that it forced Facebook and Instagram users to take betwixt seeing personalized ads oregon paying to debar them.

The punishments were smaller than the blockbuster multibillion-euro fines the committee has antecedently slapped
connected Big Tech companies successful antitrust cases.

Apple and Meta person to comply with the decisions wrong 60 days oregon hazard unspecified "periodic punishment payments," the
committee said.

The decisions were expected to travel successful March, but the self-imposed deadline slipped amid an escalating transatlantic commercialized warfare with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly complained astir regulations from Brussels affecting American companies.

The penalties were issued nether the EU's Digital Markets Act, besides known arsenic the DMA. It's a sweeping rulebook that amounts to a acceptable of do's and don'ts designed to springiness consumers and businesses much prime and forestall Big Tech "gatekeepers" from cornering integer markets.

The DMA seeks to guarantee "that citizens person afloat power implicit erstwhile and however their information is utilized online, and businesses tin freely pass with their ain customers," said Henna Virkkunen, the commission's enforcement vice-president for tech sovereignty, successful a statement.

"The decisions adopted contiguous find that some Apple and Meta person taken distant this escaped prime from their users and are required to alteration their behaviour," Virkkunen said.

Both companies indicated they would appeal.

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Apple accused the committee of "unfairly targeting" the iPhone maker, and said it "continues to determination the extremity posts"
contempt the company's efforts to comply with the rules.

Meta main planetary affairs serviceman Joel Kaplan said successful a connection that the "Commission is attempting to handicap palmy American businesses portion allowing Chinese and European companies to run nether antithetic standards."

In a property briefing successful Brussels, committee spokespeople sought to tamp down concerns that the penalties would inflame commercialized tensions.

"We don't attraction who owns a company. We don't attraction wherever the institution is located," committee spokesperson Thomas Regnier told reporters. "We are wholly agnostic connected that beforehand from a European Union."

"And beryllium it a Chinese company, beryllium it an American company, oregon beryllium it a European company, you volition person to play by the rules successful the European Union."

In the App Store case, the committee had accused the iPhone shaper of imposing unfair rules preventing app developers from freely steering consumers to different channels.

Among the DMA's provisions are requirements to fto developers pass customers of cheaper purchasing options and nonstop them to those offers.

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The committee said it ordered Apple to region method and commercialized restrictions that forestall developers from steering users to different channels, and to extremity "non-compliant" conduct.

Apple said it has "spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, nary of which our users person asked for."

"Despite countless meetings, the Commission continues to determination the extremity posts each measurement of the way," the institution said.

The EU's Meta probe centered connected the company's strategy to comply with strict European information privateness rules by giving users the enactment of paying for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram.

Users could wage astatine slightest 10 euros ($11.40) a period to debar being targeted by ads based connected their idiosyncratic data. The U.S. tech elephantine rolled retired the enactment aft the European Union's apical tribunal ruled Meta indispensable archetypal get consent earlier showing ads to users.

Regulators took contented with Meta's model, saying it doesn't let users to workout their close to "freely consent" to allowing their idiosyncratic information from its assorted services, which besides including Facebook Marketplace, WhatsApp and Messenger, to beryllium combined for personalized ads.

Meta rolled retired a 3rd enactment successful November, giving Facebook and Instagram users successful Europe the enactment to spot less personalized ads if they don't privation to wage for an ad-free subscription. The committee said it's "currently assessing" this enactment and continues to clasp talks with Meta, and has asked the institution to supply grounds of the caller option's impact.

"This isn't conscionable astir a fine; the Commission forcing america to alteration our concern exemplary efficaciously imposes a multi-billion-dollar tariff connected Meta portion requiring america to connection an inferior service," Kaplan said. "And by unfairly restricting personalized advertizing the European Commission is besides hurting European businesses and economies."