The Very First DMA Fines
But also — Huawei, London, Migration, Netherlands
Hello! Today is April 30th, and here is your EU news summary for the week. Feel free to share this newsletter with friends and colleagues, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
The Briefing
The European Commission has fined Meta and Apple €200 million and €500 million respectively for failing to comply with their obligations under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the regulation that aims to make digital markets fairer and more contestable within the EU.
REFRESHER • From March 2024, the seven gatekeepers — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Booking, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft — must comply with the obligations contained in the DMA.
These platforms have been designated as “gatekeepers” because they (i) have a significant impact on the internal market, (ii) provide one or more essential platform services constituting a major access point between businesses and end-users, and (iii) enjoy an entrenched and durable position in their activities (cumulative conditions).
On March 25, 2024, just three weeks after the DMA obligations came into force, the Commission opened non-compliance investigations against Alphabet, Apple and Meta.
FINE… • Just over a year later, the Commission has finalized its investigations into Apple and Meta.
Apple: the Commission found that Apple is engaging in so-called “anti-steering” practices. Anti-steering means not allowing companies to communicate or promote their offers free of charge through the essential platform services they use. In the present case, Apple does not allow (or at least not in a satisfactory manner) application developers who distribute their applications via the App Store to direct users to other, more advantageous offers outside the App Store.
Meta: the Commission found that Meta's “Pay or Consent” model does not comply with the DMA's obligations regarding data use. The DMA requires gatekeepers to seek consent from their users before personal data can be combined between gatekeeper services. The binary choice between consenting to the use of data or paying does not really allow users to consent.
The consequences: a €500 million fine for Apple and a €200 million fine for Meta. Both companies must comply with the abovementioned obligations within 60 days, or risk facing periodic penalty payments.
PERSPECTIVES • These are the first non-compliance decisions adopted by the Commission under the DMA.
Under the DMA, in the event of non-compliance, the Commission can impose fines of up to 10% of a company's annual worldwide sales.
Apple's annual worldwide sales reached $391 billion in 2024 (from September 2023 to September 2024), i.e. around €345 billion. The €500 million fine would therefore represent around 0.13% of Apple's worldwide annual sales — well below 10%.
Meta's annual worldwide sales reached $164 billion in 2024 (around €144 billion). The fine represents around 0.13% of sales.
Three factors seem to explain this percentage, which at first glance may seem low.
The Commission takes into account the gravity and duration of the breach when setting the level of the fine. As the DMA’s obligations entered into application a year ago, the duration component is necessarily limited.
The Commission says it has taken into account the fact that these are the first non-compliance decisions.
Finally, the Commission insists that the aim of the DMA is not to impose fines, but to ensure that gatekeepers comply. Unlike traditional competition rules (i.e. Article 102 of the TFEU, which prohibits abusing a dominant position), gatekeepers know in advance what behaviour they must (or must not) adopt, and the Commission is in constant dialogue with them.
However, these fines are by no means anecdotal. Their level remains high: Christophe Carugati compared the fine imposed on Apple under the DMA to that imposed on the company for anti-steering practices in the Apple-Spotify case (abuse of dominant position).
The Commission imposed a fine of $1.8 billion on Apple for anti-steering behavior spanning almost nine years.
As for DMA, “the Commission imposed a €500 million fine — ten times higher — for conduct beginning just one year earlier, on 7 March 2024, and still ongoing at the time of the decision”, Carugati notes. “Some commentators suggest that DMA fines are modest. (...) They are not”, he concludes.
These decisions also send a powerful message to the United States. After his inauguration, Donald Trump compared antitrust fines to tariffs.
Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera then replied: “This is not a tax. This is not something against any nationality. This is the law.”
Yet rumor had it that the risk of trade retaliation had led the Commission to reassess the outcome of its investigations.
REACTIONS • Apple described the Commission's decision as “unfair” and announced that it would appeal it.
For Meta, the Commission is “attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards.” Meta will also likely appeal the decision.
As a reminder, five of the seven gatekeepers designated by the Commission are American (Booking is a Dutch company; ByteDance, Chinese).
BUT ALSO • In parallel with the fines imposed on Apple and Meta, the Commission has announced it has closed its investigation into Apple's user choice obligations.
The DMA requires gatekeepers who manage an operating system to allow users to exercise their freedom of choice fully.
In this case, Apple must “(i) enable end users to easily uninstall any software applications on iOS, (ii) easily change default settings on iOS and (iii) prompt users with choice screens which must effectively and easily allow them to select an alternative default service, such as a browser or search engine on their iPhones.”
Following a “constructive dialogue” between the Commission and Apple, and changes made by Apple, the Commission considered that the company complied with the obligation mentioned above.
Also: DG Competition's annual report is out — it contains a chapter on DMA.
In Case You Missed It
HUAWEI • In March, the European Commission banned Huawei from its premises and those of the European Parliament. On April 24, this ban was extended to intermediaries representing the company's interests.
For over a month, Huawei has been the subject of an investigation into allegations of corruption within the European Parliament. Several people, including a senior Huawei executive, have already been arrested.
Business associations of which Huawei is a member will still be able to engage with the Commission when they do not explicitly represent the interests of the Chinese company, but this boundary is blurred. To avoid the slightest risk, several associations and lobbies are already considering excluding Huawei.
LONDON • On April 24, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer held talks in London, on the sidelines of a summit on energy security.
The meeting's aim was to prepare for the EU/UK summit scheduled for May 19, which could lead to a new strategic partnership.
Discussions on defense focused on the possible conclusion of an agreement that would enable the UK to participate in the EU's new €150 billion defense loan program, SAFE.
Only companies from non-EU countries that have signed a security pact with the Union would be able to participate in the program, on condition that specific additional agreements are negotiated between these states and the EU. These could include enhanced standardization of defense systems and a financial contribution, in the UK's case.
MIGRATION • On April 16, the European Commission proposed a list of seven “safe countries of origin” to speed up the processing of asylum applications from nationals of these countries.
The countries listed are Kosovo, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Morocco and Tunisia.
The list is part of a Commission proposal to speed up the implementation of the Asylum and Migration Pact, which was adopted in 2024 and will be applied from June 2026.
Harmonizing the list of countries whose nationals are not considered at risk of persecution would prevent an influx of asylum applications to Member States with the most flexible criteria. EU candidate countries would also be regarded as safe.
The proposal has drawn criticism from human rights organizations, who say that some countries on the list have worrying fundamental rights records.
The list must be approved by the European Parliament and the Council.
NETHERLANDS • On April 25, the Dutch government presented its plan to reduce nitrogen emissions. Spearheaded by the Minister of Agriculture (from the BBB, the Farmer-Citizen Movement), the plan aims to halve emissions by 2035, a step back from previous targets.
However, in January 2025, following a complaint from Greenpeace, the government was condemned for failing to comply with Dutch and European law. A Dutch court ruled that the state had to comply with the Habitats Directive, which governs Natura-2000 areas, before 2030.
Nitrogen emissions from intensive farming are among the highest in the EU. Farmers' opposition to the previous measures enabled the BBB to join the government after the 2023 elections.
The government is now exposed to new complaints, already announced by some environmental NGOs, and to the possibility of infringement proceedings by the Commission, whose reaction remains tempered for the moment.
What We’ve Been Reading
Two good reads on the euro’s prospects for growing its international role: one by Luis Garicano, John Cochrane, and Klaus Masuch in Silicon Continent, and a second one by Philippe Legrain in Project Syndicate.
This edition was prepared by Augustin Bourleaud, Thomas Veldkamp, Antoine Langrée, Luna Ricci, Antoine Ognibene and Maxence de La Rochère. See you next week!