By Edith Hancock

Apple faces the European Union's tech regulator again this week in a bid to avoid the risk of more fines after officials earlier this year handed the company a 500 million-euro ($583 million) penalty over the terms of its App Store.

EU officials said in April that Apple's business terms for developers--namely obligations that prevent them from telling users about better deals outside of the App Store--are unfair. That triggered a 60-day window in which Apple has to obey the EU's decision that expires on Thursday.

It is the first time the commission will look at what Big Tech has done to comply with the Digital Markets Act after fining companies for flouting the rules. Meta Platforms also got a 200 million-euro fine over its pay-or-consent advertising model.

"There is the threat of things getting worse for Apple if they don't comply," Sebastien Pant, competition policy officer at consumer group BEUC, said. If the commission decides that Apple's attempts to follow EU law still fall short, it can impose more periodic fines up to 5% of a company's daily worldwide turnover.

Apple declined to comment on Thursday's deadline. It said in April that it would appeal the fine, adding at the time that the commission was unfairly targeting the company with decisions that are bad for user privacy and for its products.

President Trump's administration accused Brussels bureaucrats of using the rules to tax successful American companies. A key deadline on trade talks between the two regions is also looming next month, and a draft agreement circulated by the U.S. proposes to give it more oversight over how the EU implements the DMA.

"The U.S. administration is putting more and more pressure on Europe as to how they're enforcing the law," Zach Meyers, director of research at Brussels think tank Centre on Regulation in Europe, said. "In practice, there is a widespread acceptance that politics has come into the process somewhat."

The back-and-forth with Apple predates Trump's re-election--the commission started investigating the company under the DMA in March 2024--but Meyers sees officials taking a more cautious approach to how it wields its regulatory power in future.

"It's quite a different decision to close the existing case versus deciding to open a new one, so I think that the commission will be thinking very carefully about opening new cases," he said.

EU officials have insisted the DMA isn't up for debate. Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera told Dow Jones this year that the EU executive doesn't make decisions based on who is elected in another country.

BEUC's Pant said enforcement is still going in the right direction. "It's going to take time for all of us--commission included--to assess whether we're there or not," he said.

Write to Edith Hancock at edith.hancock@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 26, 2025 05:59 ET (09:59 GMT)

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