Apple attacks EU digital legislation. Brussels: “They don’t want to cooperate; we won’t repeal it”

Brussels – Apple and the European Commission have been engaged in a months-long tug-of-war over whether Cupertino’s big tech company complies with Europe’s new digital market legislation (DMA). Apple has taken advantage of the first public review of the rules called by Brussels to go on the attack, asking to repeal a law whose interpretation is “constantly changing” and which would have unfairly targeted the multinational founded by Steve Jobs. The reaction of the EU executive was immediate: “There is no intention to repeal the DMA.”

In the long j’accuse released from Apple, the big tech company directly addresses its European community. “The DMA is forcing us to make some concerning changes to the way we design and deliver Apple products to our users in Europe,” is the alarm issued by Cupertino. Without mincing words, Apple denounces an implementation of rules that “varies widely from company to company.” In a passage, the star-studded multinational claims that “the DMA rules only apply to Apple, even though Samsung is the smartphone market leader in Europe and Chinese companies are growing rapidly.”

Under the DMA, there are seven very large online platforms that have to comply with a number of strict requirements in terms of transparency and user rights. They are the American platforms Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft; the Chinese ByteDance; and Booking.com, based in the Netherlands. The European Commission has already opened investigations against Alphabet, Meta, and Apple: the latter two have already been fined, respectively 200 million and half a billion dollars, on 23 aprile this year, for violations of their obligations regarding the management of users’ personal data.

Apple concluded its frontal attack by stating that the rules “should be repealed until a more appropriate legislative instrument is put in place.” Or that its implementation should be verified by “an independent European agency” that is “protected” from political interference. European Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier dismissed the suggestions of Apple’s “lobbying document,” claiming that it only “undermines the company’s narrative of wanting to cooperate fully with the Commission.” To the accusations of undermining the market, Regnier responded: “We understand that companies want to defend their profits at all costs, but that is not the purpose of the DMA: the DMA is about giving EU consumers more choice and giving our companies the chance to compete fairly,” he pointed out.