The European Commission has indicated it would limit its Digital Markets Act (DMA) fines due in the week starting April 1 on Apple and Meta and drop a separate case against Apple entirely.
European Union penalties on US tech companies were a “form of taxation” and “overseas extortion” that would invite further US tariffs, said US President Donald Trump, who levied new 25 per cent tariffs on overseas-produced automobiles on March 26.
EC officials briefed member governments on European Commissioner for Competition Teresa Ribera’s decision at a March 28 European Council meeting at ministerial level, with a public announcement intended in the next few days.
Coming into effect for large so-called “gatekeeper” platforms in March 2024, the DMA enabled the EC to impose penalties of up to 10 per cent of a company’s global turnover, potentially amounting to billions of dollars in the case of Apple and Meta.
Now, though, the EC has said it would seek fines far below that threshold.
Brussels said it also intended to drop altogether a case in which it had accused Apple of making it difficult for its users to change their browser or search engine.
EC officials, though, now believed Apple had made sufficient changes to its iOS operating system to comply with the EU’s rules.
Since taking office, Trump has warned other governments he would impose tariffs on countries that levied digital services taxes against US companies.
The EU fines against US tech firms were “as far as I’m concerned, a form of taxation”, Trump had said in a January 22 “virtual” appearance at the World Economic Forum.
“Whether you like them or not, they’re American companies,” he said, adding “so we have some very big complaints with the EU”.
Trump has been politically close to US Big Tech companies. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook donated $1 million (€930,000) to help defray the costs of Trump’s inauguration. In October 2024, the President said he had discussed with Cook the EU’s $17 billion (€15.7 billion) fines on Apple.
“I’d like to talk to you about something. The European Union has just fined us $15 billion,” Trump told a podcaster in November last year. “Then on top of that they got fined by the EU another $2 billion,” he added.
US Vice President JD Vance has echoed Trump’s criticisms, complaining at France’s recent AI summit how the US’ “most productive companies” were “forced” to deal with EU regulations.
The Trump administration was “troubled by reports that some foreign governments are considering tightening screws on US tech companies with international footprints”, Vance told the February summit.
“America cannot and will not accept that, and we think it’s a terrible mistake,” he added.
Among the retaliatory measures Trump suggested his administration could consider, in response to “discriminatory” fines on US big tech companies, were doubling tax rates for overseas citizens and companies in the US.
In a February 21 memo, Trump ordered US trade representative Jamieson Lee Greer to explore levying tariffs in response to digital service taxes by the EU, UK and Turkey.
His administration would not allow US companies and workers to “be compromised by one-sided, anti-competitive policies and practices of foreign governments,” the memo said.
The EU’s fine on Meta was for its “pay or consent” model, under which users either agreed to being tracked with the data sold to advertisers, or paid a subscription for an advertisement-free customer journey.
Meta argued, in a DMA compliance memo, its changes “meet EU regulator demands and go beyond what’s required by EU law”.
With Apple, the EC argued Cook’s company needed to take further measures to allow developers to offer their products outside its App Store.
In the wake of the Trump administration’s new tariffs on overseas-built automobiles, the EC appeared to be “keeping the fines small, as minimal as possible so as not to annoy Trump”, adding, “there is some logic in this”, Brussels-based tech researcher Lukasz Olejnik said on March 28.
Despite that, seeking to avert a deepening trade war with the US “may be a futile gesture”, said the Apple products blog Patently Apple.
