European regulators continue their Apple war, threaten HUGE fine

European regulators are plotting to topple Apple with yet another huge fine for alleged contravention of the bloc’s Digital Markets Act.

A Reuters report tells us the company will be fined for offences under the DMA, and likely relates to how Apple permits developers to direct users to places where they can purchase software outside the app store, and the extent to which its devices are compatible with rival technologies.

The fine is likely to be announced this month, “though the timing could change”, the report explains.

Fine them till they go away

It comes just months after Apple was fined two billion dollars for restricting music streaming competitors at the App Store and follows the $14 billion the EU grabbed from the company for exploiting a tax advantage it had agreed with the Irish government in Ireland.

It also comes hot on the heels of Europe’s news that it will investigate both Apple’s compliance around its iPad business and fees imposed on app developers as well. In the other corner, EU regulators are also investigating iPhone glass maker, Corning, also for possible anticompetitive practices over cover glass for electronic devices.

It’s an endless cavalcade of expensive and time-consuming legal action. Which is strange as the last time I looked it wasn’t the law industry that needed saving, but the climate.

All the same, Europe has teeth in this fight.

Centrist politics redux

Regulators there are equipped with the power to fine a company up to 10% of global turnover for its first offence under these laws, and up to 20% for subsequent offences. It is open to question if Apple will still feel Europe is a place worth doing business in if the cost of business doing there climbs above a certain point. I’ve a feeling we’re coming close to that point, and while it may seem to be a ridiculous threat, the cost of Apple removing itself from these markets would almost certainly throw European business under a bus.

One must hope cooler heads prevail, but given the partisan posturing as brain-dead, neoliberal centrism paves the way for something far worse in the currently declining advanced economies, this may not be the case. And even Apple’s billions won’t solve the systemic problems in play here.

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