The EU Is Determined to Tear Down Apple’s ‘Walled Garden’
Last month’s decision by the European Commission fining Apple for breach of the Digital Markets Act’s (DMA) anti-steering provisions was just the latest in a series of EU attempts to open the iOS platform in order make it ostensibly more “fair” and “contestable.”
But what it also made clear is that the Commission is no longer content with regulating Apple’s ecosystem: it wants to remake it, transforming a “walled garden” into a (quasi) public square. As Former European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager put it, “[one] objective of the DMA [is] to open closed ecosystems to enable competition at all levels.”
Such an outcome would, unfortunately, generate many negative consequences for consumers. While the transformation the European Commission seeks might lower entry barriers for certain competitors in the short term, it also risks undermining user privacy and security; weakening incentives to invest in similar platforms, applications, and devices; and potentially deterring companies from offering services in Europe altogether.