London – European Union surveillance corgosses Apple and meta Hundreds of millions of euros on Wednesday when they intensified the application of the digital competition rules of the 27 country block. The European Commission imposed a fine of 500 million euros ($ 571 million) on Apple for prevented user -pointed appliances from cheaper options outside of its app store. The commission, which is the executive branch of the EU, also sentenced a fine to Meta Platforms 200 million euros ($ 228 million) because it forced users of Facebook and Instagram to choose between seeing ads or paying to avoid them.
The punishments were smaller than the successful fines of several billion euros that the Commission previously slapped in large technological companies in antitrust cases.
Apple and Meta must comply with decisions within 60 days or risk “unpertified periodic penalty payments,” said the Commission.
The decisions were to arrive in March, but the officials apparently retained the increasing transatlantic trade war with President Trump, who repeatedly complained about Brussels regulations affecting American companies.
The sanctions were issued under the EU digital market law, also known as DMA. It is a book of rules that is equivalent to a set of DO and not to give consumers and businesses more choice and to prevent “guards” from large technologies from correcting digital markets.
The DMA seeks to ensure that “citizens have total control over the moment and the way their data is used online, and companies can communicate freely with their own customers,” the executive vice-president of the Commission for technological sovereignty said.
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“The decisions adopted today note that Apple and Meta have removed this free choice from their users and are required to modify their behavior,” said Virkkunen.
The two companies said they would call.
“The European Commission is trying to handicap successful American companies while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate according to different standards,” said Meta World Affairs Director Joel Kaplan, in a statement provided by the American technology giant. “It is not only a fine; the commission forces us to change our business model effectively requires a price of several billion dollars on metas while forcing us to offer a lower service. And by unfairly restoring personalized advertising, the European Commission also injures companies and European economies.”
Apple accused the commission of “unjustly targeting” the iPhone manufacturer and said that it “continues to move objective positions” despite the business efforts to comply with the rules.
In the case of the APP Store, the commission had accused the iPhone manufacturer of imposing unfair rules preventing the developers of applications from freely directing consumers to other channels.
Among the provisions of the DMA are requirements to allow developers to inform customers of cheaper purchase options and direct them to these offers.
The Commission said it had ordered Apple to remove the technical and commercial restrictions that prevent developers from directing users to other channels and ending “non -compliant” driving.
Apple said that he had “spent hundreds of thousands of engineering and brought dozens of changes to respect this law, which our users have requested.”
“Despite countless meetings, the Commission continues to move objective positions at each stage,” said the company.
Apple also faced a large antitrust trial in the United States, where Alleged Department of Justice That the Californian company has illegally embarked on anti -competitive behavior in order to build a “ditch around the monopoly of its smartphone” and maximize its profits to the detriment of consumers. Fifteen states and the Columbia district joined the trial as complainants.
The EU Meta survey focused on the company’s strategy to comply with the strict rules of privacy of European data by giving users the possibility of paying the versions without advertising of Facebook and Instagram.
Users could pay at least 10 euros ($ 11) per month to avoid being targeted by announcements according to their personal data. The American technology giant deployed the option after the head of the European Union court was considered that the meta must first obtain consent before disseminating users’ announcements, in a decision that threatened its commercial model to adapt advertisements according to the online interest of individual users and digital activity.
The regulators have challenged the META model, saying that it does not allow users to exercise their right to “freely consent” to authorize their personal data from its various services, which also include Facebook Marketplace, Whatsapp and Messenger, to be combined for personalized announcements.
Meta has deployed a third option in November by giving Facebook and Instagram users in Europe the possibility of seeing fewer personalized announcements if they do not want to pay for a subscription without advertising. The Commission said it “currently assesses” this option and continues to hold conferences with META, and has asked the company to provide evidence of the impact of the new option.
The European Commission also has Google slap with antitrust penalties several timesIncluding a record fine of $ 5 billion deducted in 2018 from the abuse of the search engine on market domination of its Android mobile phone operating system.
