Apple and Meta furious at EU over fines totaling €700 million

Summary

The European Commission issued a €500 million fine to Apple and a €200 million fine to Meta yesterday, saying that both companies violated the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The companies are required to bring their platforms into compliance within 60 days or face "periodic penalty payments," the EC said. These are the first two non-compliance decisions adopted by the commission under the DMA. The EC said it determined that Apple breached its anti-steering obligation and that "Meta breached the DMA obligation to give consumers the choice of a service that uses less of their personal data." "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," said European Commissioner for Competition Teresa Ribera. Both companies criticized the fines. Meta alleged that the EC is "unfairly restricting personalized advertising" and that "forcing us to change our business model effectively imposes a multi-billion-dollar tariff on Meta while requiring us to offer an inferior service." "The European Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards," Meta Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan said. Apple said in a statement provided to Ars that it "will appeal and continue engaging with the Commission in service of our European customers." "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," Apple said. "We have 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 goal posts every step of the way."