Italy’s top competition regulator Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato, or AGCM, has leveled a substantial fine against Apple over its App Tracking Transparency privacy rules (via MacRumors).
AGCM announced today that it has slapped Apple and two of its subsidiaries with a €98.6 million penalty for practices the watchdog says unfairly burden third-party app developers, and distort competition within the mobile app ecosystem
At the heart of the conflict is Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework, a feature introduced in April 2021 that was designed to give users control over whether apps can track their activity across other apps and websites. While Apple has long portrayed this prompt as a key privacy safeguard, regulators in Rome see it differently in the context of competition law.
The AGCM determined that Apple’s policy forces developers to ask users for tracking consent twice for essentially the same purpose, a requirement it says goes beyond what European privacy law demands.
According to the Authority’s ruling, requiring two stages of consent imposes extra hurdles for app publishers, particularly those that rely on advertising revenue to stay afloat. The duplicated consent process, the regulator argued, limits developers’ ability to collect the data they need for targeted ad campaigns, putting them at a disadvantage compared with Apple’s own services and those of its partners.
The investigation behind this decision began in May 2023 and was carried out in coordination with the European Commission and Italy’s national data protection authority. AGCM officials said the inquiry was complex and required careful analysis of how Apple’s privacy framework affected competition for apps distributed through the App Store.
Apple’s App Tracking Transparency has previously drawn attention in other EU markets. Earlier this year France’s competition authority fined the company €150 million, saying the privacy feature placed an undue burden on developers without sufficiently clear benefit to users.
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