Meth -meta and apple for violation of digital antitrust rules

The European Union fined Wednesday Apple and Meta Hundreds of millions of euros for violation of the laws on the digital competition.

The European Commission, which is the EU executive body, said it fined 500 million euros ($ 571 million) and the meta of 200 million euros (228.4 million) for violations of the Law on Digital Markets (DMA).

Officials said Apple did not fulfill the so -called “opposed” commitments according to DMA. According to the EU technological legislation, Apple is obliged to allow developers to inform customers freely about alternative proposals for the application store.

The technological giant was ordered by the EU to remove technical and commercial restrictions in management and refrain from perpetuating its impossible behavior in the future.

Apple said in a statement that the EU plans to appeal the fines, continuing its discussions with the commission.

“Today’s ads is another example of the European Commission unfairly focused on Apple in a number of solutions that are bad for the privacy and safety of our users, bad for products and make us give out our technology for free,” Apple said.

“We spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made tens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users asked. Despite countless meetings, the commission continues to move the goals at every step,” the company added.

For Meta, the EU Commission has found that a social media group illegally demanded users to agree to discuss their data with the company or pay for the service without advertising. This was in response to the introduction of Meta paid Facebook and Instagram subscription in November 2023.

Joel Kaplan, Chief Meta CEO said in a statement that the commission “is trying to interfere with the successful US business, allowing Chinese and European companies to work by different standards.”

“It is not only about the fine; the commission makes us effectively change the business model, imposes a multi-billion dollar tariff on the meta, demanding from us to offer an inferior service. And, by imparting personalized advertising, the European Commission also harms European business and economy,” he said.

The EU said its fine for Meta took into account the steps that the technological giant took to comply with its rules through the new version of its free personalized advertising service, which uses less personal data to display advertising.

“The commission currently evaluates this new option and continues its dialogue with Meta, asking the company to provide evidence of the influence that this new ADS model is in practice,” the regulators said.

The antitrust decision risks potential revenge on US President Donald Trump, who has not attacked his dissatisfaction with EU management rights on digital giants in America.

Earlier this month, Trump administration imposed so -called “back” tariffs 20% on EU goods included in the USA later dropped new tariff rates Dozens of trading partners – including the EU – up to 10% for a limited period for trade negotiations.

Mutual tariffs came after Trump previously issued Breath Threatening to impose tariffs for Europe to combat what he called the “foreign extortion” of US technology companies through taxes on digital services, fines, practice and politics.