Report from Reuters
In Brief – European Commissioner Teresa Ribera of Spain, the Executive Vice-President leading key economic priorities including competition policy, has said that decisions are expected to be announced in March in the Digital Markets Act (DMA) complaints against Apple and Meta. She indicated that the commission’s decisions will be in line with the discussions that the regulators have had with the companies in recent months. Apple, Google, and Meta were the first “gatekeeper” companies investigated by the EU Competition Authority for not complying with the requirements of the DMA. The regulator has been challenging Apple’s App Store rules, believing that they do not allow app developers to freely steer consumers to alternative buying channels outside the Apple ecosystem, as well as having concerns that the fees charged app developers are too high. The commission believes that Meta’s ad-free subscription plans for Facebook and Instagram, dubbed “Pay or Consent” by critics, does not offer users adequate choice in how their data is used for targeted ads. Meta argues that offering a free service with targeted ads and a paid, ad-free, option meets the legal requirements. The commission argues that users must be offered a free option that includes ads that are far less targeted, such as contextual ads. The regulator’s DMA investigation of how Google treats specialized vertical searches has been proceeding more slowly.
Context – The disruptions to US-EU relations caused by the second Trump presidency are obvious. Tech regulation is just one of many areas. In mid-January there were reports that the Commission was reevaluating its Big Tech investigations. Add X’s review under the Digital Services Act to the top tier. At that time, Ribera said there had been “no freezing” and “no reassessments” of the cases being pursued under the DMA. Since then, President Trump and Vice President Vance have directly criticized EU tech regulations, and Meta has been especially direct about plans to turn to the US Government “when we think we’ve been treated unfairly”. The next question is the size of the DMA fines, and whether they are big or massive.