Open Letter: Apple’s New EU App Store Terms Still Fail the DMA
The European Publishers Council has joined the Coalition for App Fairness and organisations representing digital businesses, consumers and civil society in raising serious concerns with the European Commission about Apple’s new EU App Store business terms. These terms, announced on 18 August, raise significant concerns that the barriers the DMA was intended to remove could remain in place. For press publishers, the stakes are particularly high.
The Commission is compromising on enforcement, resulting in a negotiated settlement that effectively rewrites the law. Article 5(4) of the DMA explicitly requires gatekeepers to allow developers to communicate offers free of charge. The Commission correctly enforced this in April 2025, stating the price for steering must be zero. Yet Apple’s new terms introduce a 15% fee - considerably more than zero!
Publishers increasingly depend on digital platforms and mobile ecosystems to reach audiences, build direct relationships with readers and develop sustainable subscription and other revenue models. The Digital Markets Act was designed to ensure that powerful gatekeepers cannot use their position to restrict competition or impose unfair terms on businesses that depend on their ecosystems.
The new framework continues to impose financial and non-financial obstacles to steering users towards alternative offers and distribution channels. For publishers, this can restrict the ability to build direct commercial relationships with readers, innovate with new digital products and compete on fair terms. This doesn’t work for either publishers or their consumers.
Together with our co-signatories, we call on the European Commission to provide greater transparency on the status of its proceedings and to ensure these concerns are fully considered in its ongoing assessment.
The DMA must deliver meaningful change in practice, not simply changes to contractual terms. Europe’s press publishers need a genuinely open, fair and contestable digital ecosystem in which they can reach audiences and build sustainable businesses without unnecessary restrictions imposed by dominant platforms.
