Dutch competition watchdog ACM announced on Monday that it had rejected Apple’s (AAPL.O) challenges to fines of 50 million euros ($53 million) it imposed on the business for disobeying directives to curb Apple’s App Store’s dominating position.
The ACM said that while Apple had mostly agreed with its requests to make its App Store available to alternate ways of payment for dating applications in the Netherlands, it had not satisfied a third, unspecified condition of the terms linked to the penalty.
In a 2021 decision, the ACM found that Apple had breached Dutch competition regulations in the market for dating applications and ordered Apple to permit the use of third-party payment processors by dating app developers.
It finally punished Apple with 50 million euros for the time it disobeyed, or 5 million euros each week.
Apple disputed these sanctions, claiming that the regulator had misdefined the pertinent markets and had exaggerated Apple’s dominance in the dating app industry.
Apple’s arguments were all rejected by the agency in a July 13, 2023 judgment released on Monday.
“We disagree with the ACM’s original order, which degrades investment incentives and is not in the best interests of our users’ privacy or data security,” Apple said.
“Since the ACM rejected our administrative appeal, we will appeal to the Dutch courts,” the statement read.
If Apple prevailed in court, the ACM promised to publish the portion of the proceedings that had not yet been made public.
