EU fines Meta and Apple for breaching digital antitrust rules

The European Union on Wednesday fined Apple and Meta hundreds of millions of euros each for breaching the bloc’s digital competition laws.

The European Commission, which is the executive body of the EU, said it was fining Apple 500 million euros ($571 million) and Meta 200 million euros ($228.4 million) for breaches of the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

Officials said that Apple failed to comply with so-called “anti-steering” obligations under the DMA. Under the EU’s tech law, Apple is required to allow developers to freely inform customers of alternative offers outside its App Store.

The tech giant was ordered by the EU to remove technical and commercial restrictions on steering and to refrain from perpetuating its non-compliant conduct in the future.

Apple said in a statement that it planned to appeal the EU fine while continuing its discussions with the Commission.

“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,” the company added.

For Meta, the EU Commission found that the social media group illegally required users to consent to sharing their data with the company or pay for an ad-free service. This was in response to Meta’s introduction of a paid subscription tier for Facebook and Instagram in November 2023.

Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, said in a statement that the Commission was “attempting 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. And by unfairly restricting personalized advertising the European Commission is also hurting European businesses and economies,” Kaplan said.

The EU said its fine for Meta took into account steps that the tech giant took to comply with its rules through a new version of its free personalized ads service that uses less personal data to display advertisement.

“The Commission is currently assessing this new option and continues its dialogue with Meta, requesting the company to provide evidence of the impact that this new ads model has in practice,” regulators said.

Meta was sent a cease-and-desist order by the EU ordering it to make changes to its less personalized ads option over the coming 60 days or face further fines, according to a source familiar with the matter, who asked to remain anonymous as the information is not public.

The antitrust decision risks potential retaliation from U.S. President Donald Trump, who has made no secret of his displeasure with the EU’s regulatory enforcement actions on America’s digital giants.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration imposed so-called “reciprocal” tariffs of 20% on EU goods entering the U.S. He later dropped the new tariff rates on dozens of trading partners — including the EU — to 10% for a limited time period for trade negotiations.

The reciprocal tariffs came after Trump earlier issued a directive threatening to impose tariffs on Europe to combat what he called “overseas extortion” of American tech companies through digital services taxes, fines, practices and policies.