Today, 34 companies and associations operating across a wide range of digital sectors,
including aviation, publishing/press, gaming, commercial radios, audio streaming, applications software, communications, marketing, payment, fintech, crypto and marketplaces, wrote to the European Commission's Executive Vice-President and to Commissioner for Internal Market, expressing their concerns for Apple’s proposed scheme for compliance with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), as communicated on 25 January 2024.
Angela Mills Wade, Executive Director of the EPC said "today, Apple has made it abundantly clear that they will use every excuse not to comply with the DMA in order to maintain their stranglehold over their business users, including publishers. They have no intention of meeting DMA requirements of fairness and competition, leaving business users with no real choice. Apple imposes excessive fees and prevents publishers from even knowing who their own users are. Apple wants to make sure that they continue to control the customer relationship, starving publishers of rightful information about who their customers are, thereby blocking any communication with them."
It should not come as a surprise that Apple's proposal will not meet the law’s requirements therefore inhibiting our ability to deliver the benefits of the DMA to consumers as soon as possible. Apple’s new terms not only disregard both the spirit and letter of the law, but if left
unchanged, make a mockery of the DMA and the considerable efforts by the European Commission and EU institutions to make digital markets competitive.
Read our concerns to our letter.
