Apple’s EU Siri AI Delay Shows DMA Reducing Competition, Auer Says
BRUSSELS (9 June 2026) — Apple’s decision to withhold its new Siri AI from iPhones and iPads in the European Union shows the Digital Markets Act (DMA) delivering the opposite of its stated goal: less competition, not more, according to Dirk Auer, director of competition policy at the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE).
Apple unveiled Siri AI—a significantly more capable assistant powered by Apple Intelligence—on 8 June, but said it will not launch on iOS 27 or iPadOS 27 in the EU because of the DMA. The company has provided no timetable for when the feature might become available. Siri AI will, however, launch in Europe on Mac and Apple Vision, platforms not designated under the DMA.
“No company lightly withholds a flagship feature from its best-selling devices in one of the world’s wealthiest markets,” Auer said. “The fact that Apple would rather forgo the European market than launch on the Commission’s terms shows how deeply the DMA now influences which digital products Europeans can access.”
The result, Auer argued, is a competition law that is reducing competition rather than increasing it.
The market for AI assistants is intensely competitive. OpenAI, Anthropic and others are racing to develop increasingly capable products, while Apple—working in part with Google’s AI models—was attempting to enter that contest with a serious new offering. The DMA is now the principal obstacle preventing that product from reaching European consumers.
“Removing a competitor from the market is the opposite of contestability,” Auer said. “European consumers are left with fewer choices and a less capable iPhone than users elsewhere.”
At the heart of the dispute is a trade-off between interoperability and security that the DMA is poorly suited to resolve.
To comply with the Act’s interoperability requirements, Apple says it would need to grant third-party assistants the same deep system access that powers Siri AI, including the ability to read messages, make payments and act across apps. Yet that same access creates significant security and privacy risks if placed in the wrong hands. Apple proposed an intermediary solution and a phased 18-month rollout, but the European Commission rejected those proposals, requiring the interoperability measures without the accompanying safeguards.
Auer continued:
“Six weeks ago the Commission graded its own DMA homework and awarded itself top marks. Today Europeans learn the price: the newest iPhone in Paris or Berlin will be less capable than the one in New York. The DMA was sold as a tool to increase competition, yet here it does the opposite—keeping a serious rival out of the European market while OpenAI, Anthropic and others race ahead. Fewer firms competing for European users is not more contestability; it is less. If the Commission is serious about the Draghi agenda, it should ask whether the DMA is delivering competitiveness or quietly taxing it.”
Apple’s announcement follows a series of product delays in Europe that ICLE has previously documented, including Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Threads and Google’s AI Overviews. It also comes only weeks after the Commission’s first DMA review concluded that the regime was “fit for purpose” and required no revision.
To arrange an interview with Auer, contact Jim Fellinger at [email protected].
About ICLE
The International Center for Law & Economics is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center working with a roster of more than one-hundred academic affiliates and research centers from around the globe. ICLE scholars promote the use of law and economics methodologies to inform public policy debates.