EU allegedly only plans “moderate” punishment against Apple for DMA violation

In the conflict of possible violations of Apple's Digital Markets Act (DMA) of the European Union, there are first signs of how expensive it could be for the iPhone manufacturer. According to a report by the Reuters news agency, the EU Commission initially only plans “moderate” penalty payments-although it would be possible to collect many billions of euros through the DMA.

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Conflict avoidance tactics?

The law allows the EU to collect up to ten percent of the global annual turnover, at Apple this would be almost $ 40 billion for the 2024 financial year. How “moderate” The punishment actually turns out to be unclear. According to the report, however, it currently looks like that the Commission is more concerned with using the DMA instead of sanctioning companies. It is also conceivable that the EU does not want to heat a direct conflict with the Trump administration at least, the DMA is primarily concerned with US companies.

Trump had recently emphasized in a government determination that he would sanction states that take American corporations with punishments. The EU emphasizes that you are not only turning against US companies-however, they dominate the technology market to which the DMA aims. However, a final decision on the EU has not yet been made, it is expected this month. The competition commissioner Teresa Ribera from Spain is only new in office, she replaced the Danish Margrethe Vestager-controversial at least in US corporations.

Apple already paid billions

In addition to Apple, Meta, formerly Facebook, should also benefit from “moderate” fines. However, this is also about significantly less money than Apple. Among other things, the iPhone group is said to have violated the DMA with its handling of the App Store. Before that, it was said that the EU wanted to put a real example on Apple. However, this was in autumn before Trump moved into the White House again.

The EU Commission officially warned Apple in June that it must give developers new opportunities to advertise their offers outside the App Store. Most recently, the iPhone manufacturer had presented a compliance plan. In addition to iOS, iPados is also regulated, but the Mac is not. Most recently, Apple had had to leave a lot of money in the EU: after a final defeat in front of the European Court of Justice, 13 billion euros due to subsidies at the Ireland headquarters and 1.8 billion euros due to app storage devices against the Spotify music service.