The American company would rather pay fines than ignore Dutch law

Europe criticizes Apple for not complying with antitrust law

Apple paid fines of 25 million euros to the Dutch competition authority.

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The European Union's chief digital officer, Margrethe Vestager, has criticized Apple, saying the company deliberately prefers to pay fines in exchange for not complying with antitrust law requiring it to allow the dating app to benefit from third-party payment technology. To sell app content.

fines

And “Apple”, in the recent period, received a fifth fine of five million euros (about 20.4 million dirhams), which must be paid in the Netherlands, which raises the total fines imposed on the company so far from the Dutch Competition Authority to 25 million euros (about 102 million dirhams). However, it appears that the company has no intention of complying with the laws.

Digital Markets Law

In her speech in the United States, the European official highlighted an essential element of its digital policy, which is the “Digital Markets Law” that will apply prior rules to the most powerful intermediary technology platforms also known as “gatekeepers”, but she pointed to looming challenges, represented in the effective implementation of the list. Among the operational do's and don'ts that EU lawmakers intend to enforce are to proactively combat abusive behavior by dominant platforms and restore fairness to digital markets.

Appeal to Americans

“Some gatekeepers may be tempted to play for time or try to circumvent the rules, and (Apple)’s behavior in the Netherlands these days may be an example of that,” Vestager said in her letter.

And as we understand, Apple basically prefers to pay periodic fines, rather than comply with the Dutch competition authority's decision on the terms and conditions of third-party access to its App Store.

This will be one of the obligations contained in the Digital Markets Act.”

Vestager appealed to US lawmakers to adopt, or at least support, the European Union's approach to the pre-competition rules that would apply to tech giants, to present the best opportunities for regulating the digital world.

model for the judiciary

"We want our work on 'gatekeepers' to inspire other jurisdictions in the same way," Vestager continued.

We see this in Japan, for example, and in the United Kingdom and Australia.

In the United States, there are many laws that are brought before Congress, and they share many features with our proposals.

This is encouraging because it means that there is a lot of consensus at the global level.”

non-discriminatory law

It is noteworthy that there are many laws that are not adopted by the US Congress, but the European Union makes clear that it hopes that lawmakers in the United States will unite to achieve some kind of reform in digital competition.

That is why Vestager raised the issue before the American people, because the law on digital markets is “objective” and not “discriminatory” in an attempt to confront accusations that Europe is adopting “protectionism” by creating punitive laws aimed at punishing giant corporations in the United States only.