Apple, Meta fined by EU, ordered to comply with tech competition rules
Summary
The move risks ratcheting up tensions with the Trump administration as EU officials pursue trade talks.BRUSSELS : The European Union fined Apple and Meta Platforms hundreds of millions of dollars and ordered the companies to comply with the bloc’s tech rules, a move that risks ratcheting up tensions with the Trump administration as EU officials pursue trade talks.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, on Wednesday slapped Apple with a 500 million euro fine, equivalent to about $570 million. It fined Meta €200 million.
The commission also issued cease-and-desist orders against both companies, which target business practices that are an important part of their revenue streams, and could have a bigger impact than the fines.
It ordered Apple to remove what it said were technical and commercial restrictions on app developers’ ability to inform users about cheaper and alternative ways to buy digital products outside the company’s App Store.
The commission also said it is still evaluating whether an option Meta has for several months given European users to see “less-personalized ads" on Instagram and Facebook without paying a subscription fee complies with the cease-and-desist order—raising the specter of further changes. The EU fine covers a period last year when Meta required European users to agree to seeing personalized ads on those apps, or pay for an ad-free subscription.
The actions against both companies come under the EU’s Digital Markets Act, a law passed in 2022 that seeks to make it easier for smaller companies to compete with global tech behemoths. Breaches of the law carry a potential fine of up to 10% of a company’s global annual revenue. The fines issued Wednesday were far below that level—around 0.1% of each company’s annual revenue.
Apple said it would appeal the decision, which it said was another example of the commission unfairly targeting the company with moves that “are bad for the privacy and security of our users, bad for products, and force us to give away our technology for free."
Meta said it would likely appeal. “The commission forcing us to change our business model effectively imposes a multibillion-dollar tariff on Meta while requiring us to offer an inferior service," said Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer.
The commission had last week delayed penalizing the two companies, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time, just as European officials were seeking to ramp up trade negotiations with the U.S. The announcement had initially been planned for April 15, one day after EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič met with U.S. officials and two days before Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s meeting with President Trump.
Trump said after meeting with Meloni that he would have “very little problem" making a trade deal with the EU.
Write to Kim Mackrael at kim.mackrael@wsj.com and Sam Schechner at Sam.Schechner@wsj.com
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