LONDON: European Union watchdogs fined Apple and Meta hundreds of millions of Euros Wednesday as they stepped up enforcement of the 27-nation bloc's digital competition rules.
The European Commission imposed a 500 million Euro (USD 571 million) fine on Apple for preventing app makers from pointing users to cheaper options outside its App Store.
The commission, which is the EU's executive arm, also fined Meta Platforms 200 million Euros because it forced Facebook and Instagram users to choose between seeing ads or paying to avoid them.
The punishments were smaller than the blockbuster multibillion-Euro fines that the commission has previously slapped on Big Tech companies in antitrustcases.
The decisions were expected to come in March, but officials apparently held off amid an escalating trans-Atlantic trade war with US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly complained about regulations from Brussels affecting American companies.
The penalties were issued under the EU's Digital Markets Act, also known as the DMA. It's a sweeping rulebook that amounts to a set of do's and don'ts designed to give consumers and businesses more choice and prevent Big Tech “gatekeepers” from cornering digital markets.
The DMA seeks to ensure “that citizens have full control over when and how their data is used online, and businesses can freely communicate with their own customers,” Henna Virkkunen, the commission's executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, said in a statement.
“The decisions adopted today find that both Apple and Meta have taken away this free choice from their users and are required to change their behaviour,” Virkkunen said.
Apple accused the commission of “unfairly targeting” the iPhone maker, saying it has “spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law.”
Meta Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan said in a statement said the “Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards.”