EU fines Apple and Meta combined €700m
The
European Union
has handed tech giants
Apple
and
Meta
significant fines of €500 million and €200 million respectively, for breaching the bloc's new rules regulating digital markets.
The ruling penalised Apple for putting unfair restrictions on app developers who use its App Store. Facebook and Instagram-owner Meta was fined over its 'consent or pay' model of charging users a monthly subscription, if they refused to allow the company to use their personal data for targeted ads.
The fines were handed down following investigations launched over suspected breaches of the EU's Digital Markets Act, which seeks to regulate the power of big tech players. The regulations came into force in 2023 and put obligations on tech companies who hold dominant market positions, to allow fair competition.
The fines follow two antitrust investigations undertaken by the European Commission, the EU executive that enforces the union's tech regulations.
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The financial penalties on the US multinationals will likely stoke the fire of the trade dispute between the US and the European Union. US president Donald Trump has repeatedly criticising the union's strict regulations on tech firms.
The commission decided that Apple was preventing app developers from steering customers to cheaper subscription offers available outside of its App Store system.
'Due to a number of restrictions imposed by Apple, app developers cannot fully benefit from the advantages of alternative distribution channels outside the App Store,' the commission said.
'Similarly, consumers cannot fully benefit from alternative and cheaper offers as Apple prevents app developers from directly informing consumers of such offers,' it said.
The EU executive ordered Apple to lift the technical and commercial restrictions it puts on app developers who list their products on its App Store.
Tech giant Meta was fined over a new model it introduced in late 2023, which required users to pay a monthly subscription fee, if they refused to allow their data to be used by the company to tailor advertisements.
The commission ruled that this did not give Facebook or Instagram users enough choice to opt for a service that used less of their personal data, or allowed people to freely consent to how their data was used.
EU officials found that the number of Meta users who opted to pay a monthly fee was a fraction of one per cent of the social media platforms users.
A senior commission official involved in the investigation said there was a view that Meta's binary choice effectively 'forces users to consent to the use of their personal data for advertising'.
It is likely the cases may be appealed to the EU courts by Apple and Meta.
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