The punishments, the first under the DMA, are much lower than the previous sanctions under the traditional law of EU competition, and it is likely that they will be considered as an attempt to avoid even more provoking Trump | Photo credit: Yves Herman
Apple Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. were affected by relatively modest fines of the European Union for a total of 700 million euros ($ 798 million) for violating new antitrust rules for large technologies, after warnings of hard reprisals of the president of the United States, Donald Trump.
The EU regulators raised the fines: € 500 million against Apple and 200 million euros against goal – under their law of digital markets, which includes a list of two and a gift directed mainly to the Giants of Silicon Valley.
“Apple and Meta have fallen short,” the EU Teresa Ribera antimonopoopoly chief said Wednesday. “All companions operating in the EU must follow the laws and respect European values.”
The punishments, the first under the DMA, are much lower than the previous sanctions under the traditional law of the EU competence, and they are probable that they will be considered as an attempt to avoid provoking Trump further, who recently established a strip of tariff economies. The technological regulations of the EU have been specifically called as the son of the non -tariff commercial barrier that its so -called reciprocal tariffs are destined to point.
The European Commission said Apple had not allowed developers to link from their app store to make sales outside the company’s market. The goal model for services without advertising on Instagram and Facebook was also assigned to the technological law, which offers powerful regulators of up to 10 percent of the global annual income of a company.
Both companies must comply with the EU’s decision within 60 days, or face the risk of additional financial sanctions. Apple was also warned that its new rate structure for application developers, a plan designed to comply with the EU rules, is not in line with the EU Big Tech rules book.
Apple responded fiercely to the EU penalty, accusing the regulators of the block of discriminating to the company and forcing it to give its technology for free. The company based in Cupertino, California, said it would appeal the fine to the EU courts. Last year, the company was beaten with an EU fine of 1.8 billion euros to close the music rivals on the iPhone.
The Chief of Global Meta Affairs, Joel Kaplan, also replied, saying that the EU “is trying to harm the successful US companies while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards.”
The EU decision “is not a fine; the commission forces us to change our business model effectively imposes a multimillionaire rate to the finish line while demanding us to sacrifice a lower service,” Kaplan said. “And by unfairly restricting personalized advertising, the European Commission is also harming European companies and economies.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
When asked if the commission had deliberately kept the low fines to avoid provoking Trump, the EU commission based in Brussels said the fines were “proportionate” to the alleged severity and duration of the DMA, which became two years of Ause.
“This is the application. It is not about commercial negotiations,” said the spokeswoman for the Arianna commission to the journalists.
Even so, the size of the fines “suggests a flexibility of European regulatory pressure on US technological giants,” according to Bloomberg’s intelligence analyst Tamlin Bason.
“The sanctions under the competence law could have been up to 10 percent of the total revenues, but ended up being less than 0.15 percent of the sales of 2024 of each company, which probably reflects the caution in the aggressive application Auset Sid.
Despite its fine, Apple saw that EU guardians closed an investigation into online browsers after resetting how users offers more options on their iPhones.
The EU regulators also retreated their decision to go to the Facebook market under the DMA. Goal was beaten by an EU fine of 798 million euros for alleged abuses in that service last year under the standard antimonopoopoopoolio law.
Apple shares increased 3.5 percent and target advanced 7 percent in New York’s first operations, while the S&P 500 index increased 3 percent.
Around the last years, the EU has made expensive sanctions against companies, including more than $ 8 billion in fines against Google of Alphabet Inc. and a separate order for Apple to pay Ireland taxes of € 13 billion.
Under its rules of dominance abuse, it has also forced changes in the Amazon.com Marketplace platform and the Tap and Go chip of Apple, while investigating the Microsoft Corp. videoconference software, equipment.
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Posted on April 24, 2025
