US government: EU penalty against Apple and Meta is “economic extortion”

The US return carriage for the EU’s EU Low and Meta was not long in coming: such punishments are a “new form of economic blackmail” and was “not tolerated”, a spokesman for the White House said in a statement, From which the Reuters news agency quotes, among other things. Such a regulation of US corporations is classified as a “commercial barrier” and as a “direct threat to a free civil society”.

Comparatively small penalties against Apple and Meta

The EU Commission imposed the first penalties against Apple and Meta on Wednesday of 500 million euros or 200 million euros. The corporations classified by EU competition huts as gatekeers are accused of violations of the law on digital markets (Digital Markets Act, DMA). Both companies have announced that they make an appeal.

The amount of the penalty is practically change for Apple (and meta), but the corporations have to change their complained business practices. Apple has to allow other companies to link to cheaper offers from iOS apps and therefore apparently does not require a high commission, for example, for subscription degrees and purchases on the web or deterrent warnings when tapping such a link. This ultimately has billions of billions from commission income. These are part of Apple’s growing service business, with which the group was able to implement almost $ 100 billion in the past year. Both companies now remain 60 days to clear out the violations – then the EU can impose further daily penalty payments.

Epic Games welcomes DMA penalty against Apple

Similar to the Trump government, influential IT lobby groups from the United States also described the EU fines on Thursday as a “tariff” and an escalation in the transatlantic trade dispute. Apple argued again that the changes in iOS did not want a user – and it was bad for security. Only the US group was shaken by the U.S. Epic Games, which has been against the power of platform operators Apple and Google for years: the enforcement of the Digital Markets Act is a “great news for developers”, wrote epic founder Tim Sweeney. The procedure also does not aim to target US companies, co-founder Mark made it purely, but free all companies from “illegal fees”. By in-app purchases in Fortnite alone, Apple apparently received $ 300 million commission-before Epic Games provoked the expulsion from the App Store. Fortnite now offers Epic in its own Games Store for iOS like Android – outside the shops of the platform operators.