The Commission's Opening Bid
On 23 April 2025, the European Commission issued what it described as a landmark enforcement decision under the Digital Markets Act (DMA): Apple was fined €500 million and Meta €200 million for violating their obligations as designated gatekeepers. Apple's transgression was clear. Under Article 5(4) of the DMA, gatekeepers must allow developers to freely inform users about alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them toward those offers, and complete transactions without incurring fees to Apple for doing so. The Commission found Apple had structured its terms to prevent exactly this: restricting external links to developer-owned websites only, prohibiting in-app web-view routing, displaying deterrent warning screens when users followed external links, and imposing fees on steered transactions that the law explicitly prohibits. Apple was given 60 days to comply — a deadline that expired in late June 2025.
Fourteen months later, Apple has not fully complied. The Coalition for App Fairness, whose members include Spotify, Epic, and Match Group, told regulators in late 2025 that Apple's revised App Store terms "continue to impose fees which the legislation prohibits" and that the company has delivered "no meaningful changes or proposals" in response to the April ruling. A planned transition from Apple's per-install Core Technology Fee to a revenue-based Core Technology Commission, promised for January 2026, has stalled. As of June 2026, Apple is still in discussions with the Commission about the structure of that transition.
What the Violation Actually Was
The Commission was precise about what Article 5(4) requires and what Apple did wrong. Developers were allowed to link users outward to external websites — but only to the developer's own site, not directly to purchase flows. Web-view routing was blocked. Apple displayed modal warnings before any external link that were explicitly designed to discourage users from following through. And the fee structure Apple imposed on link-out purchases — an initial acquisition fee plus ongoing service charges — meant that even "compliant" steering carried a commercial cost the DMA intended to eliminate.
Critically, the Commission rejected Apple's argument that maintaining two parallel programme tracks — one compliant, one not — satisfied the law. "Each set of business terms must individually comply with Article 5(4)," the decision stated. That ruling closed the central workaround Apple had attempted.
The Case for This Regulation
Before criticising the enforcement architecture, it is worth being honest about what the DMA has produced. Apple and Google controlled more than 95% of mobile operating systems in the EU at the time the regulation was designed. Developers distributing to iPhone users had no practical alternative to the App Store and no legal basis to negotiate terms. Traditional competition law — which requires proving dominance and harm in individual proceedings — spent years generating preliminary findings across multiple jurisdictions without forcing a single structural change. The DMA's first enforcement action produced more concrete concession from Apple in twelve months than a decade of antitrust proceedings.
The Commission's first formal DMA review, published on 28 April 2026, found the law "fit for purpose." Alternative app stores now exist on iOS — a development that was legally impossible before the DMA came into force. Browser choice screens have measurably shifted market share away from Safari and Chrome. Third-party payment systems are live across the EU for the first time. The BirdyChat messaging interoperability case — where a Latvian startup can now exchange messages with WhatsApp users — is exactly the kind of structural gain ex ante regulation was designed to deliver, not ex post litigation.
Where the Enforcement Architecture Fails
The problem is not the law's goals but the mechanical gap between fine and remedy. A €500 million penalty represents approximately 0.14% of Apple's annual revenue. For a company with hundreds of billions in cash reserves, this functions as a compliance surcharge rather than a deterrent. The DMA does provide for periodic penalties of up to 5% of global daily turnover for continued non-compliance — a figure that would be genuinely painful. But triggering those payments requires the Commission to open a fresh non-compliance proceeding, allow responses, and reach a formal decision. That process takes months. While it proceeds, Apple's App Store economics remain substantially intact.
A secondary problem is geopolitical. CSIS noted that five of the seven DMA-designated gatekeepers are American companies, and the regulation was drafted without U.S. partnership. Enforcement — however legally justified — has become diplomatically loaded in ways Brussels did not fully anticipate. Escalating periodic penalties against Apple in 2026 carries transatlantic weight that the Commission must weigh.
There is also evidence that the mandated friction carries real user costs. Research cited by Euronews found that up to 66% of frequent EU users report longer searches and less relevant results as a direct consequence of DMA-mandated choice screens. Regulatory-required steps are not automatically equivalent to consumer benefit.
Google Is Next
While Apple has drawn most of the attention, the Commission issued preliminary findings against Google's Play Store in March 2025 for analogous anti-steering violations. Google updated its Play Store terms for EEA developers in August 2025, introducing a tiered billing system that allows alternative payment methods at reduced commission rates. EU regulators and independent analysts have continued to question whether those changes satisfy the DMA or replicate the pattern Apple established: nominal structural change, substantive economics preserved. A formal Commission decision on Google is expected by the end of 2026.
What Enforcement Speed Now Determines
The April 2026 DMA review is correct that the regulation has produced real structural change. But the central question — whether Apple and Google have genuinely opened app distribution to competition — remains unresolved. Apple's fee architecture has grown more complicated, not more open. The Commission's enforcement toolbox is well-designed but slow. If the gap between a gatekeeper's resources and a regulator's procedural timeline is wide enough, ex ante rules risk becoming a ceiling rather than a floor. The DMA's next enforcement chapter will test whether that gap can be closed faster than gatekeepers can generate legal complexity.