Brussels fined Apple for steering restrictions the law names

The figure or the record

Regulation (EU) 2022/1925, the Digital Markets Act, states in Article 5(4) that a gatekeeper 'shall allow business users, free of charge, to communicate and promote offers... and to conclude contracts with those end users,' regardless of whether they use the gatekeeper's own platform to do so; Article 5(5) extends this to letting end users use content or items they bought outside the gatekeeper's core platform service. The regulation applied generally from 2 May 2023, and the Commission's 6 September 2023 designation decision named Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft as gatekeepers, stating they 'will now have six months to ensure full compliance.' On 23 April 2025, the Commission's non-compliance decision found that 'Apple fails to comply' with the anti-steering obligation and fined Apple €500 million.

What the documents establish

The three documents together establish a specific chain: a written legal duty (Article 5(4)), a named deadline mechanism for a designated company (six months from the 6 September 2023 decision), and a later enforcement finding against one company for one obligation. The Commission's decision states the finding narrowly: 'app developers... cannot fully benefit from the advantages of alternative distribution channels outside the App Store' because of restrictions Apple imposed, and it orders Apple 'to remove the technical and commercial restrictions on steering.' The same press release records a separate, smaller fine against Meta, €200 million, for a different obligation concerning consent for personalised advertising, which this entry does not describe further.

Scope and caveats

The Commission's finding concerns steering — informing users of and directing them to offers outside the App Store — not a specific commission percentage; it does not, in the wording available, set a numeric cap on Apple's fees. The decision applies to Apple's conduct as a designated gatekeeper for the App Store in the EU specifically, and its remedy (removing the named restrictions) is what the Commission ordered, not a description of what Apple has since implemented, which this entry has not verified against a later compliance filing.

What to watch

Editorially, the gap between an order to 'remove restrictions' and a verified change in Apple's EU terms is the detail to track next: a future Commission statement, or Apple's own EU terms page, would show whether the remedy took the form of new pricing, new linking rules, or both, and whether a coin-selling app can now direct EU users to a cheaper web purchase without the restrictions the decision named.

• Has Apple published updated EU terms that name the specific steering restrictions the Commission ordered removed?
• Does the six-month compliance clock in Article 3(10) apply the same way to a newly designated gatekeeper as it did to the original six?
• Is a claim about DMA-driven app pricing citing the steering decision, a different DMA obligation, or a separate national law?

A regulator's decision naming one obligation and one remedy is a precise record of what the Commission found, and it should not be stretched into a general claim about app-store pricing across all of the DMA's other, separately enforced duties.