Source: AFP
The European Union warned Apple on Monday that its App Store is violating digital competition rules, putting the iPhone maker at risk of billions of dollars in fines.
It is the latest in a long-running battle between Brussels and the tech giants, covering issues from data privacy to disinformation.
Stifling competition
Brussels has fined tech companies more than 10 billion euros for abusing their dominant market position.
The latest threat to Apple comes three months after the block hit the California company with a 1.8 billion euro ($1.9 billion) fine for preventing European users from accessing information about cheaper music streaming services.
Among major tech companies, only Google has faced a larger single antitrust fine — more than four billion euros in 2018 for using its Android mobile operating system to promote its search engine.
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Google has also incurred more than billions in fines for abusing its power in online shopping and advertising.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, recommended last year that Google must sell parts of its business and could face a fine of up to 10 percent of its global revenue if it fails to comply.
Privacy
Ireland has the strictest data privacy penalties as laws are enforced by local regulators and Dublin is home to the European offices of many major tech companies.
The Irish regulator fined TikTok €345 million for mishandling children’s data last September, just months after it hit Meta with a record €1.2 billion fine for illegally transferring personal data between Europe and the United States.
Luxembourg previously held the record for data fines after it fined Amazon €746 million in 2021.
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Taxation
The EU has had little success in getting tech companies to pay more taxes in Europe, where they are accused of funneling profits to low-tax economies such as Ireland and Luxembourg.
In one of the most notorious cases, the European Commission in 2016 ordered Apple to pay Ireland more than a decade in back taxes — €13 billion — after ruling a sweet deal with the government was illegal.
But EU judges overturned the decision saying there was no evidence the company had broken the rules, a decision the Commission has been trying to overturn ever since.
The Commission is also fighting to reverse another legal loss after judges rejected its order for Amazon to return 250 million euros in back taxes to Luxembourg.
Misinformation, hate speech
Web platforms have long faced accusations of failing to combat hate speech, misinformation and piracy.
The EU passed the Digital Services Act last year, which is designed to force companies to address these issues or face fines of up to six percent of their global turnover.
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Already the bloc has begun to show how DSA could be implemented, opening investigations into Facebook and Instagram for failing to tackle election-related disinformation.
The bloc has also warned Microsoft that falsehoods generated by its search for artificial intelligence could violate the DSA.
Paying for news –
Google and other online platforms have also been accused of making billions from news without sharing the revenue with those who put it together.
To address this, the EU created a form of copyright called ‘neighboring rights’ which allows print media to claim compensation for the use of their content.
France was a test case for the rules, and after initial resistance, Google and Facebook agreed to pay some French media for articles that appear in web searches.
Source: AFP