The EU adopted its Digital Markets Act (DMA) to give European consumers more choice and better access to innovative products and internet services. Since the DMA entered into force in May 2023 Europe’s consumers have indeed felt benefits in terms of more choice of services, apps and hardware, thanks to the DMA.
For example, the DMA requires Big Tech companies to ensure that mobile devices are interoperable with hardware (such as earphones) from third parties. On top of that, it also requires gatekeepers to allow consumers to change which app is their default on their devices (such as navigation, browsers, email and wallets) in a handful of clicks, and to stop unfairly giving preference to their own products and services (such as search, messaging and payments).
Big Tech undermining DMA
Still, the benefits for consumers would be even greater if certain Big Tech companies would stop fighting the new rules tooth and nail. Apple and Google have been trying to bypass the DMA because it obliges them to change the business practices that have helped earn them profits by depriving consumers of meaningful choice while harming innovation and competition by excluding new market entrants. These companies continue to exploit their power to avoid compliance with DMA provisions that make them adapt certain elements of their business model. They discredit it and hope to make it go away while claiming to act in consumers’ interests.
Tech companies have long claimed that the alleged DMA strict prohibitions mean new products launched around the world couldn’t be sold to Europeans.
The latest example of this concerns Apple’s claim that it cannot roll out the latest version of its personal assistant Siri, powered by “Apple Intelligence”, on iPhones and iPads in the EU because of the DMA. Apple maintains that this is to protect consumers “privacy and security”.
Yet, it becomes increasingly evident that Apple tries to delay and obstruct compliance, while rolling out these features at a later point. For example, the company also claimed they could not bring Live Translation for AirPods to the European Union due to the DMA. Yet, the feature was officially expanded to EU markets only a few months later.
The European Commission has pointed out that in fact Apple wanted an 18-month exemption from the DMA’s interoperability rules for its new Siri AI on iPhones and iPads. These rules require internet gatekeepers like Apple to ensure other companies can effectively compete on equal terms with services provided by the gatekeeper such as virtual assistants. During that 18-month period, Siri AI would have had privileged access to features of the iPhone’s or iPad’s operating system that no rival would obtain. This would be enough for Apple to develop a headstart in the virtual assistant market on iPhones and iPads.
According to the Commission “Apple was simply unable to develop interoperability solutions that meet essential EU privacy and security standards”. In fact, “nothing in the DMA prohibits Apple from introducing new products and services in the EU”, as reiterated by the Commission.
Standing firm against Big Tech influence
In other words, Apple is once again using consumer protection as a pretext to be exempted from the DMA so that it can continue its long-established strategy of keeping consumers within its own ‘walled garden’ of products.
This is despite the fact that the DMA has been adopted by EU Ministers and the European Parliament in full accordance with the EU’s democratic law-making procedures, even if Big Tech companies like to claim it’s the work of ‘unelected Brussels bureaucrats’.
The Commission therefore has the full support of BEUC to continue to insist that Apple and other internet gatekeepers comply with EU law in general and the DMA in particular. If companies want the benefit of accessing the EU’s 450 million consumers, they have to play by the EU’s rules.