European Union watchdogs fined Apple and Meta hundreds of millions of euros Wednesday as they stepped up enforcement of the 27-nation bloc’s digital competition rules.
The European Commission imposed a 500 million euro ($571 million) fine on Apple for preventing app makers from pointing users to cheaper options outside its App Store.
The commission, which is the EU’s executive arm, also fined Meta Platforms 200 million euros because it forced Facebook and Instagram users to choose between seeing ads or paying to avoid them.
The punishments were smaller than the blockbuster multibillion-euro fines that the commission has previously slapped on Big Tech companies in antitrustcases.
Apple and Meta have to comply with the decisions within 60 days or risk unspecified “periodic penalty payments,” the commission said.
The decisions were expected to come in March, but officials apparently held off amid an escalating trans-Atlantic trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly complained about regulations from Brussels affecting American companies.
The penalties were issued under the EU’s Digital Markets Act, also known as the DMA. It’s a sweeping rulebook that amounts to a set of do’s and don’ts designed to give consumers and businesses more choice and prevent Big Tech “gatekeepers” from cornering digital markets.
Both companies indicated they would appeal.
Apple accused the commission of “unfairly targeting” the iPhone maker, and said it "continues to move the goal posts” despite the company's efforts to comply with the rules.
Meta Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan said in a statement that the “Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards.”
In the App Store case, the Commission had accused the iPhone maker of imposing unfair rules preventing app developers from freely steering consumers to other channels.
Among the DMA’s provisions are requirements to let developers inform customers of cheaper purchasing options and direct them to those offers.
The commission said it ordered Apple to remove technical and commercial restrictions that prevent developers from steering users to other channels, and to end “non-compliant” conduct.
Apple said it has “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 said.
The EU’s Meta investigation centered on the company’s strategy to comply with strict European data privacy rules by giving users the option of paying for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram.
Users could pay at least 10 euros ($11) a month to avoid being targeted by ads based on their personal data. The U.S. tech giant rolled out the option after the European Union’s top court ruled Meta must first get consent before showing ads to users, in a decision that threatened its business model of tailoring ads based on individual users’ online interests and digital activity.
Meta rolled out a third option in November giving Facebook and Instagram users in Europe the option to see fewer personalized ads if they don’t want to pay for an ad-free subscription.