Apple Wants EU To Rethink Digital Markets Act

Apple is asking Europe’s antitrust regulator to do away with its digital protection rule.

In a blog post Thursday (Sept. 25), the tech giant asked the European Commission (EC) to rethink its Digital Markets Act (DMA) a little more than a year after it was enacted.

“Over that time, it’s become clear that the DMA is leading to a worse experience for Apple users in the EU,” Apple wrote.

“It’s exposing them to new risks, and disrupting the simple, seamless way their Apple products work together. And as new technologies come out, our European users’ Apple products will only fall further behind.”

The landmark DMA was designed to combat market abuse by tech giants operating within the European Union, and covers these companies’ operating systems, app stores and platforms. The law lets regulators levy fines totaling up to 10% of a company’s annual worldwide revenue, or 20% in the case of repeat offenders.

The EC fined Apple $580 million in April, saying the company had violated rules for allowing developers to direct users to purchases outside of app stores. Apple is appealing the fine.

In its blog post, Apple argued the DMA requirements for permitting other app market places and alternative payment systems don’t take into account the privacy and security standards of the App Store, placing users at risk for being scammed or overcharged.

“The DMA also lets other companies request access to user data and core technologies of Apple products,” the company wrote. “Apple is required to meet almost every request, even if they create serious risks for our users.”

Companies, the blog post added, have required some of the most sensitive data on user’s iPhones, such as messages, emails, medical alerts, or the history of all the Wi-Fi networks a user has joined.

Apple’s comments on the DMA follow a report from earlier this week that regulators in Europe were seeking more information about the company’s financial fraud protections.

Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s executive vice president of tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said the bloc wants to determine whether Apple — along with Meta and Google — is doing enough to prevent fraud.

“We see that more and more criminal actions are taking place online,” said Virkkunen, per a Financial Times report. “We have to make sure that online platforms really take all their efforts to detect and prevent that kind of illegal content.”

That report noted that regulators were set to issue formal requests for information to the three companies, under powers granted under the Digital Services Act (DSA), a sister piece of legislation to the DMA.