Following reported delays On political concerns, the European Commission (EC) has penalized apple and meta on anti -competitive activities. Fines of 500 million euros and 200 million euros respectively (around $ 570 million and $ 228 million) are the first to be issued under the new Digital Markets Act (DMA), According to EC.
The fines were issued after the commission called an in -depth consultation with the two companies after the surveys Opened in March 2024. Apple violated the DMA by preventing developers from informing sales customers and other offers outside the App Store. “Consumers cannot fully benefit from alternative and cheaper offers because Apple prevents applicants from applications from directly informing consumers of these offers,” wrote the Commission, adding that it has not demonstrated that the restrictions are “objectively necessary”.
The fine of 500 million euros levied against Apple takes into account the “gravity and duration” of non -compliant behavior. The EC also ordered Apple to delete restrictions and refrain from imposing them in the future.
However, the Commission closed his investigation In another Apple material around the choices of applications “thanks to an early and proactive commitment of Apple on a compliance solution”. Namely, Apple has changed its browser choice screen, facilitated users to modify the default parameters for things such as calls, messages, keyboards and password managers, and have agreed to allow users to uninstall applications like Safari.
Meanwhile, the EC struck the meta from its “consent or pay“System that forced EU users to get out of € 10 ($ 11) per month for a subscription without advertising or to be forced to share their data. META introduced a new version of the free personalized ads model in November 2024 which supposedly uses Less personal data To display the announcements (while reducing the price of the subscription to € 6), but the commission still assesses this.
The fine of 200 million euros therefore takes into account the period between March 2024 and November 2024, when Facebook raped the DMA rules. However, Meta could face new penalties depending on how the EC assesses new personalized additions. On a positive note for Meta, the CE rule that Facebook Marketplace is no longer designated under the DMA, following “a careful assessment of Meta's arguments and following … additional monitoring and continuous monitoring measures”.
Last month, the meta-PDG Mark Zuckerberg specifically invited President Trump will intervene on potential EU sanctions around the problem of remuneration for confidentiality. The White House also published a memo in February saying that it could retaliate against any European sanction of DMA against American technological companies. However, Meta has its own problems in the United States which could have more disastrous consequences. The Ministry of Justice accused him of having crushed competition by acquisition and could force him to liquidate Key applications like Whatsapp and Instagram.
