Europe’s Showdown with Big Tech: Dawn of New Regulatory Era
CEO of Meta and Apple Marc Zuckerberg and Tim Cook respectively, EU President Ursula ven der Leyen in the centre (Image credit X.com)
EU Tightens Grip on Tech Giants: Apple, Meta Face Billions in Fines Under DMA and GDPR
By Sesh Kumar Pulipaka
New Delhi, April 25, 2025: The regulatory noose is tightening on the business models of global tech behemoths, with the European Union wielding its legal arsenal against Silicon Valley titans Apple and Meta.
With a string of record-breaking fines, running into billions, while Apple and Meta have been hammered under traditional antitrust statutes and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the very first enforcement actions under the groundbreaking Digital Markets Act (DMA) in April 2025 have been unveiled. The legal rationale, enforcement strategies, and implications of these actions may act as a lamppost.
Europe has long styled itself as the world’s digital sheriff, but the last two years have turned that rhetoric into reality for tech giants Apple and Meta. The continent’s regulatory machine, driven by a unique blend of competition law, privacy mandates, and, most recently, a muscular Digital Markets Act, has delivered a bruising run of fines that promise to reshape the global tech landscape.
Apple’s regulatory odyssey began in earnest with a thunderclap in March 2024, when the European Commission slapped the company with a €1.8 billion (nearly $2 billion) penalty. The chargesheet was compelling: Spotify, the streaming giant, had complained that Apple was systematically abusing its dominance in the iOS music streaming ecosystem.
For years, Apple’s “anti-steering” rules barred app developers from even telling users about cheaper subscription options available outside the App Store. Developers were corralled into using Apple’s payment system, incurring up to 30 per cent in fees, or left to keep quiet — ultimately forcing higher prices and less choice upon consumers.
The Commission ruled that this conduct flagrantly violated Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which outlaws the abuse of market power to distort competition. For Apple, this was more than a financial blow; it was a shot across the bow, signalling Europe’s willingness to dismantle the walled gardens Big Tech had so carefully cultivated.
Meta, meanwhile, has faced its own gauntlet of European enforcement —first under the GDPR, and now under the DMA. In January 2023, Meta was hit by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission with a €390 million ($414 million) fine for forcing users of Facebook and Instagram to accept personalized advertising as a condition of service, violating the GDPR’s insistence that consent for data processing must be specific, informed, and freely given.
When Meta tried to tweak its approach — rolling out a “Consent or Pay” model that offered users the choice of consenting to ads or paying for an ad-free experience — the EU wasn’t convinced. In April 2025, the European Commission fined Meta another €200 million, ruling that even this model failed to live up to the DMA’s requirements for user choice and market fairness.
Simultaneously, Apple was again in the EU’s crosshairs, receiving a €500 million fine for continuing to restrict app developers from communicating alternative purchase options to users — a clear DMA violation.
What sets the most recent fines apart is not just their size, but their legal and strategic underpinnings. Earlier penalties, like the March 2024 blow to Apple and Meta’s GDPR fines, were rooted in Europe’s established antitrust and privacy frameworks —reactive enforcement, punishing misconduct after the fact.
But the DMA marks a new era: it is proactive, imposing obligations on “gatekeepers” before harm can occur, and allowing for penalties up to 10 per cent of global turnover. It reflects the EU’s conviction that digital markets are uniquely susceptible to entrenched dominance and require a bespoke regulatory regime that puts user rights, interoperability, and competitive access above platform profit.
Apple and Meta are not taking this lying down. Apple has announced a full-throated appeal, arguing that its App Store model protects security and user confidence, and that the Commission failed to demonstrate any real consumer harm.
In parallel, Apple is hurriedly revising its European App Store rules, opening the door to alternative payment options and third-party app stores — changes made more urgent by the DMA’s mandates. Meta, too, is contesting the Irish regulator’s GDPR interpretation and the size of the penalties, while experimenting with new user consent mechanisms such as ad-free, paid versions of Facebook and Instagram.
Yet both companies are caught in a regulatory pincer: their most lucrative, data-driven and vertically integrated business models now face a sustained assault from an EU that sees itself as a global standard-setter.
The implications are profound. First, the size and frequency of these fines send a clear message to tech giants everywhere: the era of unchecked digital dominance is over in Europe, and the bar for compliance is rising.
Second, the DMA’s arrival has shifted enforcement from punitive to preventive, making it harder for platform giants to simply pay fines as a cost of doing business.
Instead, they must make fundamental changes to their products and operations, with ripple effects for users and rivals worldwide.
Finally, as Apple and Meta launch appeals and adapt their strategies, the outcomes will shape not just the European market, but the global direction of digital regulation. Already, regulators from Washington to Canberra are watching Europe’s moves and drawing up their own blueprints
By wielding both the GDPR and DMA, Europe is forcing Big Tech to confront its most lucrative practices, dismantling walls that have for years kept users captive and rivals at bay. Apple and Meta are now scrambling to defend their empires — through litigation, lobbying, and policy pivots — but the message from Brussels is clear: user rights, open markets, and competitive choice are now non-negotiable.
(This is an opinion piece; views expressed solely belong to the author)
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