DMA: EU Commission imposes heavy fines on Apple and Meta

According to the EU Commission, Apple must pay a fine of 500 million euros for violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The proceedings have been ongoing since last year –. Since then, the EU Commission has, according to its statements, repeatedly provided clear indications as to how the company would have to adapt its services to become DMA-compliant. The fine announced today mainly concerned the App Store and the extent to which the company hindered access to third-party stores – and thus other developers –.

Meta is to pay 200 million euros. This concerns the so-called pay-or-consent model: Meta charges users in the EU a usage fee if they refuse to have their behavior analyzed and to link this behavior across platforms. The EU Commission had already informed Meta in July 2024 that it considered the design to be in breach of the DMA. Last November, Meta made improvements, which are currently still being reviewed by the EU Commission, irrespective of the DMA penalty imposed today.

EU Commission Vice-President Henna Virkkunen emphasized that the DMA aims to protect the market for consumers and companies. “The decisions adopted today state that both Apple and Meta have deprived their users of this free choice and must change their behavior,” said the Finn, who has been responsible for digital affairs since autumn 2024. The EU Commission has a duty to protect the rights of citizens and companies in Europe.

Transatlantic political issue

Meta, on the other hand, believes she is being unfairly penalized. “The European Commission is trying to hinder successful American companies while allowing Chinese and European companies to work according to different standards,” it said in a statement. The Commission is forcing Meta to change its own business model – to an inferior service. “And by unfairly restricting personalized advertising, the European Commission is also harming European companies and economies,” writes Meta.

The DMA has also recently become the focus of transatlantic debates – The US administration under Donald Trump has repeatedly issued explicit warnings to the EU not to hinder US companies. There is a view in parts of the administration that EU regulation and the resulting penalties would constitute tariff-like trade barriers on which counter-tariffs should be imposed. Meta has now apparently endorsed this view.

However, a memorandum issued by the US President in February, in which he instructed his authorities to examine the matter, has not yet resulted in any concrete conclusions on how to deal with EU penalties. Some US companies had also emphasized that the EU's DMA as a competition law addresses the digital market problem – and therefore helps them to assert their interests against the largest players.

However, Meta is also currently the focus of competition proceedings in the US by the Federal Trade Commission. Unlike the FTC proceedings, the European Digital Markets Act is not about a possible break-up or unbundling of groups. Google's monopoly position is also being negotiated in the USA.

DMA is a powerful competition law

Unlike the Digital Services Act, which is primarily concerned with the duty of care and liability of operators, the Digital Markets Act is part of competition law, which is intended to prevent monopolies and abuses of power by dominant players that are dangerous for the free market. The DMA was intended to take account of the specific competitive conditions in the digital space, where data access and interoperability play a major role.

One of the main reasons for the DMA was the so-called vertical integration of business models, such as in the case of Apple, where everything from hardware control to the stored data, from the end device to operating systems and the app store comes from one company. This enables the EU Commission, as the supervisory authority, to impose fines of up to 10 percent of annual global turnover. Secondly, the Commission can also order specific implementation measures, for example to ensure that third-party stores for iOS or the use of hardware functions by third parties are not hindered.

The companies affected can take legal action against the EU Commission's decision before the European courts in Luxembourg. In the past, other competition law penalties have been partially overturned by the European Court of Justice.

(mki)