The European Commission announced, Wednesday, April 23, a series of financial sanctions on Wednesday, April 23 against Apple and Meta technology giants for competition offenses. While Donald Trump is engaged in recent weeks in a real trade war, including with the Old Continent, these sanctions come a year after the opening of procedures against the two Californian giants. © The White House/Flickr Backup safeguarded Receive Apple alerts The European Commission announced on Wednesday financial sanctions against the American giants of Apple and Meta technologies (Facebook, Instagram) for competition offenses, despite tensions with President Donald Trump on customs duties. Apple is inflicted a fine of 500 million euros for abusive clauses in its App Store application shop, to the detriment of application suppliers and their customers. Meta will have to pay 200 million euros for violating a rule framing the use of personal data. These sanctions are the first pronounced within the framework of the new European regulation on digital markets (DMA), which came into force last year to end the abuse of dominant position of tech giants. They intervene a year after the opening of procedures against the two Californian groups, but above all at a delicate moment for transatlantic relations. The European Union is indeed in full negotiations with the US administration to obtain customs duties imposed by Donald Trump. American surcharges of 25% on cars, aluminum and steel have already entered into force as well as a customs surcharge of 10% on all other products. Read also: Apple is massaging its iPhone in mass to avoid the customs duties of Trump Appeal intends to make a tenant of the White House regularly denounces the taxes, fines and regulatory constraints imposed by Europe on American digital services. Unlike use, EU fines were announced by simple press release, without a press conference of the European executive. Apple immediately challenged a decision that “unjustly targets it” and announced that the group would appeal while continuing dialogue with the European Commission. The amount of fines, however, appears moderate compared to those imposed so far by Europe on “Big Tech”. Apple is sanctioned for restrictions in its App Store application store. According to the Commission, the Apple brand hinders the capacity of the suppliers of applications distributed in its online store to communicate directly with end users to freely promote their offers and possibly offer lower rates on other channels. On this file, the Cupertino group was inflicted in March 2024 a fine of 1.8 billion euros by the EU, after a complaint from the Spotify music streaming platform. Meta, giant of social networks, is targeted for breach of the rule which forces him to request the consent of users in order to be able to combine personal data from his various services, such as Facebook and Instagram, for advertising profiling purposes. The Mark Zuckerberg group, however, proposed in November a modification of its offer to comply, hence a financial sanction below that imposed in Apple. This proposal, currently studied by the commission services, could end the procedure if it is deemed satisfactory. Receive our latest news each morning, the information to be remembered on the financial markets. (tagstotranslate) Apple
The EU strikes Apple and Meta to the wallet … at the risk of annoying Trump
