Apple, Meta fined as EU presses ahead with tech probes

BRUSSELS, April 23 (Reuters): Apple (AAPL.O) was fined 500 million euros ($570 million) on Wednesday and Meta (META.O) 200 million euros, as European Union antitrust regulators handed out the first sanctions under landmark legislation aimed at curbing the power of Big Tech.

The EU fines could stoke tensions with US President Donald Trump who has threatened to levy tariffs against countries that penalise US companies. Trump’s White House called the fines a “novel form of economic extortion” that the United States will not tolerate.

They follow a year-long investigation by the European Commission, the EU executive, into whether the companies comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that seeks to allow smaller rivals into markets dominated by the biggest companies.

The fines signal that the EU is sticking to its guns in enforcing the new rules, which were introduced in 2023. That is despite Trump citing the DMA while vowing in February to “defend American companies and innovators from overseas extortion”.

European regulators crack down on Google, other Big Tech

Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google and Elon Musk’s X are also facing potential fines from European regulators.

The EU will be encouraged by a U.S. court judgment earlier this month which found that Google illegally dominates two markets for online advertising technology, Commission sources say. That ruling could pave the way for US antitrust prosecutors to seek a breakup of its ad products.

The 500 million and 200 million euros fines imposed by the European Union on respectively Apple and Meta Platforms are “proportionate”, an EU spokesperson said on Wednesday, reacting to views that they were modest.

“On the fines, are they modest, are they high? From our point of view, they are proportionate (…) also to the duration and the gravity of the infringement,” he said during a briefing.