{"id":46699,"date":"2025-04-24T13:27:11","date_gmt":"2025-04-24T13:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/46699\/"},"modified":"2025-04-24T13:27:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T13:27:11","slug":"european-commission-fines-apple-and-meta-for-violations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/46699\/","title":{"rendered":"European Commission Fines Apple and Meta for Violations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Get set for the next tangling of antlers between the US and the European Union. Why? Because the European Commission has\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/commission\/presscorner\/detail\/en\/ip_25_1085\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">found Apple and Meta in breach of its Digital Markets Act<\/a>, and has fined the tech giants \u20ac500m and \u20ac200m respectively. <\/p>\n<p>Apple was fined for its \u2018steering terms\u2019 over how developers could (or, rather, couldn\u2019t) tell customers about alternative offers outside the App Store. Think Spotify subscriptions. Meta, meanwhile, has been fined for what the EC describes as its \u201cconsent or pay\u201d model where \u201cEU 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\u201d. <\/p>\n<p>Note, the fines are actually relatively small, considering they could have been up to 10% of each company\u2019s annual global revenues ($165bn for Meta and $391bn for Apple last year).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2025\/apr\/23\/eu-fines-apple-and-meta-for-breaching-fair-competition-rules\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Both companies have hit out at the ruling<\/a>, including a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/about.fb.com\/news\/2025\/04\/metas-statement-in-response-to-the-european-commissions-decision-on-the-digital-markets-act\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">punchy statement from Meta\u2019s chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan<\/a>. \u201cThe European Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>And yes, that IS a bat-signal being sent out to US president Donald Trump. One that was received loud and clear. \u201cThis novel form of economic extortion will not be tolerated by the United States,\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/sustainability\/boards-policy-regulation\/us-calls-eu-fines-apple-meta-economic-extortion-2025-04-23\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a White House spokesperson told Reuters<\/a>. This could hint at a ramping up of tariffs on the EU and other measures penalising European companies.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1152\" height=\"768\" class=\"wp-block-cover__image-background wp-image-84562\" alt=\"EarPods and phone\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/blackzheep-_-Shutterstock-Mediano.jpg\" data-object-fit=\"cover\"  \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get set for the next tangling of antlers between the US and the European Union. Why? Because the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[1662,2000,299,5187,1699,598],"class_list":{"0":"post-46699","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-apple","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european","12":"tag-european-union","13":"tag-meta"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114393176061262292","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}