Apple is actively appealing the €500 million fine it received from the European Commission (EC) for violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA). In a detailed official statement, Apple warned that complying with the EC’s interoperability demands would compromise user privacy and could force the company to scale back key features for European customers.
Here’s Apple’s latest statement on the matter, in full:
At Apple, we design our technology to work seamlessly together, so it can deliver the unique experience our users love and expect from our products. The EU’s interoperability requirements threaten that foundation, while creating a process that is unreasonable, costly, and stifles innovation.
These requirements will also hand data-hungry companies sensitive information, which poses massive privacy and security risks to our EU users. Companies have already requested our users’ most sensitive data — from the content of their notifications, to a full history of every stored WiFi network on their device — giving them the ability to access personal information that even Apple doesn’t see.
In the end, these deeply flawed rules that only target Apple — and no other company — will severely limit our ability to deliver innovative products and features to Europe, leading to an inferior user experience for our European customers. We are appealing these decisions on their behalf, and in order to preserve the high-quality experience our European customers expect.
The DMA mandates that Apple open core system functions — like notifications, WiFi network data, and file-sharing tools like AirDrop — to third-party services. Apple argues this would grant broad system-level privileges to outside apps without equivalent security safeguards, exposing sensitive user data. Notably, AirDrop might be dropped in the EU, and devices like AirPods and Apple Watch could face restricted functionality or delayed launches.
Apple emphasized these requirements would not impact global users, but could lead to “an inferior user experience” for EU customers. With the DMA appeal ongoing, Apple’s future in the EU market looks uncertain. WWDC 2025 could quietly hint at which features or devices may stay exclusive to non-EU markets.
