The EU Commission issued fines of EUR 500m and EUR 200m respectively to Apple and Meta, finding the two tech giants to have breached their obligations under the EU’s Digital Markets Act.
The Commission says Apple breached its anti-steering obligation under the DMA, while Meta breached the DMA obligation to give consumers the choice of a service that uses less of their personal data.
Apple breached its anti-steering obligation under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and that Meta breached the DMA obligation to give consumers the choice of a service that uses less of their personal data.
The Commission stresses that the two decisions come after extensive dialogue with the companies concerned allowing them to present in detail their views and arguments.
Under the DMA, app developers distributing their apps via Apple’s App Store should be able to inform customers, free of charge, of alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them to those offers and allow them to make purchases.
The Commission found that Apple fails to comply with this obligation. 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. Similarly, consumers cannot fully benefit from alternative and cheaper offers as Apple prevents app developers from directly informing consumers of such offers. The company has failed to demonstrate that these restrictions are objectively necessary and proportionate, says the Commission.
As part of today’s decision, the Commission has ordered Apple to remove the technical and commercial restrictions on steering and to refrain from perpetuating the non-compliant conduct in the future, which includes adopting conduct with an equivalent object or effect.
The fine imposed on Apple takes into account the gravity and duration of the non-compliance.
Explaining the non-compliance decision on Meta’s ‘consent or pay’ model, gatekeepers must seek users’ consent for combining their personal data between services under the DMA. Those users who do not consent must have access to a less personalised but equivalent alternative.
Under Meta’s binary ‘Consent or Pay’ advertising model, introduced in November 2023, EU users of Facebook and Instagram had a choice between consenting to personal data combination for personalised advertising or paying a monthly subscription for an ad-free service.
The Commission found that this model is not compliant with the DMA, as it did not give users the required specific choice to opt for a service that uses less of their personal data but is otherwise equivalent to the ‘personalised ads’ service. Meta’s model also did not allow users to exercise their right to freely consent to the combination of their personal data.
In November 2024, after numerous exchanges with the Commission, Meta introduced another version of the free personalised ads model, offering a new option that allegedly uses less personal data to display advertisements. 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.
Today, the Commission also found that Meta’s online intermediation service Facebook Marketplace should no longer be designated under the DMA. The decision follows a request submitted by Meta on 5 March 2024 to reconsider the designation of Marketplace. Following a careful assessment of Meta’s arguments and as a result of Meta’s additional enforcement and continued monitoring measures to counteract the business-to-consumer use of Marketplace, the Commission found that Marketplace had less than 10,000 business users in 2024. Meta therefore no longer meets the relevant threshold giving rise to a presumption that Marketplace is an important gateway for business users to reach end users.
