Apple: Europe’s DMA should be repealed

One year after Europe codified the Digital Markets Act (DMA), it is clear the law is leading to worse experiences for Apple users in the European Union, limiting choice, undermining privacy, exposing them to risks and damaging the user experience consumers chose. 

Apple is urging the European Commission to rethink the Act, demanding more expertise, more clarity, and more focus on what consumers, not competitors, want from tech.

The DMA should be repealed

Europe has launched its first review of the effectiveness of the DMA, which so far seems mainly to have punished Apple customers in Europe. Apple is demanding it be repealed, or at the very least that enforcement be professionalized and clarified.

The company particularly wants independent experts who understand technology to be responsible for the DMA’s application rather than the current crop of political appointees. The company filed its criticisms of the DMA on Thursday morning, arguing that it is forcing Apple to make “concerning changes” to how it designs and delivers products to customers there. 

For example, it warns that the non-appearance of Live Translation in Europe could be the tip of a growing iceberg. If the DMA is poorly applied, it remains possible European customers could even see features removed.

Malicious regulation

Apple makes no secret that it feels like a victim, given that the DMA forces it to open its platforms to competitors at no cost while also doing serious – perhaps fatal – damage to customer privacy. 

“The DMA’s rules only apply to Apple, even though Samsung is the smartphone market leader in Europe, and Chinese companies are growing fast,” Apple said. “Apple has led the way in building a unique, innovative ecosystem that others have copied — to the benefit of users everywhere. But instead of rewarding that innovation, the DMA singles Apple out while leaving our competitors free to continue as they always have.”

This one-sided application of rules cannot continue, it argues. Not only is it unfair to Apple, but it is deeply unfair to its users. 

An attack on privacy

The company says it can’t do some of the things the DMA requires of it and keep the privacy promises it has made. It also warns that as the rules are applied, competing companies such as Meta can exploit the DMA to exfiltrate huge quantities of user data, breaking privacy. In other words, people you don’t choose to support can still make millions of dollars — even though you chose a completely different product.

“We’ve suggested changes to these features that would protect our users’ data,” says Apple, “but so far, the European Commission has rejected our proposals.”

It gets worse. The application of the DMA makes it illegal for Apple to introduce new features in Europe until they are also made available to other companies’ products. That means that when developing new features Apple must invest not just in its own platform, but in competing platforms and products to ensure such operability or face massive fines.

Apple’s competitors are already using the law to undermine elements of the user experience. Some are demanding the complete content of iPhone notifications and Wi-Fi network history, both of which give third parties valuable data with which to track and monetize customers – without consent.

An impossible lack of clarity

But even this complex web of demands isn’t sufficient, as Europe’s regulators seem deeply capricious. “Under the DMA, the European Commission’s interpretation of the rules is constantly changing. And that makes it nearly impossible for companies to know how to comply,” Apple said. 

Figuratively, this means a decision agreed to one day is no longer good enough by the following week, with Apple suffering punitive fines as a result of the capricious application of regulation.

The company is effectively arguing against its critics, who accuse it of “malicious compliance” by pointing out that it is itself also subject to malicious application of the regulation. Instead, it points to near constant communication between corporate officials and regulators, and the hundreds of engineers it has working to make its systems compliant with Europe’s seemingly ever-changing rules.

It is also true that under the DMA, companies must make the changes demanded by regulators even if they choose to oppose them in a legal process that can take years, during which the damage is done. Penalties are arbitrary, applied unevenly, and punish companies rather than promoting competition.

Bad for Europe, bad for Europeans

All of this is not just bad for Apple’s business, of course, it’s also punitive to customers, who face more risks when downloading apps and making payments as a result of sideloading and alternative payment systems. It also makes for a fractured apps market with less reliable protections.

Not only do European customers lose access to some features Apple can’t introduce in the bloc, but they also lose access to the choice they originally made to opt for an Apple-curated experience.

In other words, far from helping markets, the DMA is making it harder to do business in Europe. In my view, given the application of the DMA I’ve seen so far, Europe’s application of the law is flawed, politically-driven, and should be improved.

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