The US innovates, the EU regulates. Some transatlantic investors are blustering about it. We won’t get into that noise here, but two things are clear: the bloc’s single market has its own rules, and many US tech giants have flouted EU competition rules for decades. Whatever you think, it doesn’t matter.
Earlier this month, as she successfully handled several high-profile antitrust appeals against Apple and Google, the EU’s outgoing competition chief Margrethe Vestager jokingly referred to Big Tech as some of her top clients. Ouch.
We’ve compiled a list of the 10 biggest EU antitrust actions targeting technology, to give you a quick overview of the most visible (if not always significant) competitive clashes between Brussels and industry giants in the last few decades of digital development. The list is sorted by the size of the fines or liabilities involved.
It’s fair to say that the EU’s antitrust enforcement efforts have had mixed results, but one of the lasting legacies is that some of these high-profile cases have inspired the bloc’s Digital Markets Act, a signature market competition reform that could see major tech companies hit harder and faster in the years to come. It’s finally time for Big Tech to buckle up.
Tax relief for Apple in Ireland
no one Enjoy Paying taxes, even unpaid taxes, is even more so. But by September 2018, Apple had been tearfully paying taxes to the EU. 13.1 billion euros (valued at $15.3 billion at the time) after the bloc won a case against Ireland, one of its member states, over tax breaks illegally granted to Apple between 1991 and 2014.
The state aid case, which falls broadly under the bloc’s competition rules, has been going back and forth between the EU Court of Appeal, but in September 2024, the Court of Justice upheld the Commission’s original August 2016 ruling on illegal state aid.
With the Supreme Court making its final ruling (rather than referral to a lower court), Apple’s legal options to continue challenging the ruling are effectively exhausted, and billions of dollars in unpaid taxes sitting in EU escrow accounts are likely to finally be flowing into Irish coffers.
Google’s Android Restrictions for OEMs
Google has been in trouble in the EU for years, costing the company a lot of money by micromanaging what software mobile device manufacturers can bundle with its operating system, Android, and thus giving Android users their own products regardless of their hardware choice. In fact, it is worth about $5 billion in antitrust violations. The 2018 sanctions imposed by the Commission for abusing its dominant position were, and still are, the record penalties for this category of competitive abuse.
Originally EU 4.34 billion euros The fine against Google was slightly reduced to €4.125 billion in an appeal decision by the General Court in September 2022. However, the judges largely upheld the original Commission decision, rejecting Google’s attempt to overturn the enforcement.
In June 2017, Google was hit with another (then) record-breaking blow. 2.42 billion euros Penalties for abusing a dominant position — This is related to the way it operates its product comparison service called Google Shopping (formerly Google Product Search, and before that the punning Froogle).
The block found that the tech giant, which has almost complete control over Europe, not only unfairly favored its own (and eponymous) shopping comparison service in organic search results, but also actively demoted competing comparison services. The multi-billion-euro fine (valued at $2.73 billion at the time of publication) was later confirmed in a September 2024 ruling by the EU’s top court.
Apple’s Anti-Steering on iOS Music Streaming
The EU has applied a theory of competition abuse in its long-running enforcement action against Apple over its conduct in the iOS-based music streaming market, accusing the company of consumer exploitation rather than exclusionary conduct.
The Block’s competition department changed its strategy several times as it investigated iOS developer complaints against the App Store operator, but it finally filed a lawsuit against Apple in March 2024. 1.84 billion euros A fine (around $2 billion) for banning developers from informing iPhone users about cheaper deals available outside Apple stores. Most of the financial sanctions (€1.8 billion in total) were applied on top of the EU’s standard damages calculation, which the bloc said it hoped would act as a deterrent. (Without it, the fine would have been just €40 million, or a “parking ticket” level fine for Big Tech.)
Google’s AdSense Restrictions
In March 2019, Google was hit with another antitrust fine of more than $1 billion for abuse of power, when the block imposed sanctions on the company over its search advertising brokerage business. The commission found that Google used restrictive clauses in its contracts with customers from 2006 to 2016 to pressure competing advertising brokers. 1.49 billion euros (or about $1.7 billion) was formally imposed.
However, in September 2024, despite upholding most of the Commission’s ruling, the EU General Court overturned the AdSense decision entirely, citing errors in how the Commission assessed the duration of Google’s contracts. It is not yet known whether the EU will appeal.
The commission still has another (open) case looking more broadly into Google’s advertising tech stack, which could also make the AdSense case look like a small beer case. Margrethe Vestager warned last year that if suspected violations were confirmed, a structural breakup (i.e. breaking up Google) could be the only viable remedy.
PC Monitor/TV Parts Price Fixing Cartel
In 2012, the EU 1.47 billion euros Fines imposed in a cartel case involving the sale of components used in the manufacture of computer monitors and TVs. The electronics giants were caught in an enforcement action for manipulating prices of cathode ray tubes (CRTs) between 1996 and 2006. These components were used in computer monitors and TVs before the flat-screen era, and the commission found that the hardware manufacturers conspired to manipulate prices. Fines were imposed on seven electronics giants, including LG, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, and Toshiba, for their involvement in one or two CRT cartels.
Chipmaker Intel’s Exclusive Practices
Going back in time, it was May 2009, a record-breaking year at the time. 1.06 billion euros The EU has hit chipmaker Intel with antitrust penalties after finding that the U.S. giant abused its dominant position to exclude rival AMD. Intel has been paying computer manufacturers and retailers to delay, cancel or otherwise avoid using or selling AMD products, and the EU found that the exclusionary practices violated competition rules.
The chipmaker then appealed the EU’s enforcement, with some success, after a decade of legal wrangling. In 2017, the Court of Justice overturned a lower court’s earlier ruling and sent the case back to the General Court, which reversed some of the Commission’s decisions but found some of Intel’s practices to be unlawful.
The court overturned the original fine entirely due to uncertainty over the calculation of the fine, but last year the EU re-imposed a fine of €376.36 million on Intel for “blatant restrictions” that the court upheld. With the appeal still ongoing, it is unclear where this enforcement will ultimately end up.
Qualcomm and Apple’s Mobile Chip Deal
In early 2018, mobile chipmaker Qualcomm was hit with a huge antitrust penalty from the EU. 997 million euros (or about $1.23 billion at the time). The sanctions are for abusing its dominant position between 2011 and 2016. The enforcement focused on Qualcomm’s relationship with Apple, which the EU determined had excluded competing chipmakers that supplied LTE baseband chipsets from the market by paying Apple to use its chips exclusively in iPhones and iPads.
However, Qualcomm appealed the ruling, and in June 2022 the EU General Court ruled in Qualcomm’s favour, dismissing the Commission’s analysis and finding some procedural errors in the case. The EU later confirmed that it would not appeal the ruling, so it is a significant antitrust violation that has not made headlines.
The block has had better luck in a separate (and long-running) antitrust proceeding against the chipmaker. In September 2024, the Supreme Court largely upheld a commission fine of about $270 million imposed on Qualcomm in a case involving predatory pricing.
Microsoft’s Anti-Competitive Licensing Practices
We need to turn back the clock to March 2004, when the EU took Microsoft to task for abusing its dominant position with the Windows operating system. 497 million euros The fine (about $794 million) would be worth closer to €762 million (or about $1.3 billion) today, adjusted for eurozone inflation (see this tool).
The first complaint, which prompted an investigation into Microsoft’s licensing and royalty practices, dates back to 1993. EU enforcement against Microsoft has been upheld on appeal. In addition to imposing the fine, the bloc has ordered a range of remedies, including interoperability requirements, and in February 2008, Microsoft was fined a second time, €899 million, for noncompliance. A 2012 ruling by the EU General Court upheld the noncompliance fine, but reduced its level slightly to €860 million.
Tax Agreement between Luxembourg and Amazon
In an October 2017 state aid case, the EU alleged that Luxembourg, the member state where e-commerce giant Amazon is based, granted the company “unfair tax benefits” between May 2006 and June 2014. The commission found that Amazon’s corporate structure in the country allowed it to pay four times less tax than other companies based in the country. The EU calculated that the tax benefits were worth about $100. 250 million euros(The EU does not impose fines for state aid cases, but requires the recovery of illegally uncollected taxes.)
But while the Commission, unlike the aforementioned Ireland-Apple state aid case, took issue with the way Amazon’s taxable profits were calculated in Luxembourg, the argument failed in court. In a final ruling late last year, the EU’s top court overturned the Commission’s decision and ruled that the EU had failed to prove that the Luxembourg tax ruling amounted to illegal state aid. The upshot? Amazon was not liable.
