The Italian competition authority (AGCM) has fined US tech giant Apple €98 million on Monday for allegedly breaching competition rules via its so-called App Tracking Transparency.
Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy is a set of privacy rules it has imposed on third-party app developers operating on its app store since 2021. Third-party app developers are required to obtain specific consent for the collection and linking of data for advertising purposes.
The AGCM has argued that the policy breaches European competition rules – in particular by abusing its dominant position in the app store market.
Apple’s tracking policy was also imposed unilaterally on all other developers and harmed the interests of Apple’s commercial partners, the AGCM said.
The policy was also found to be disproportionate from a data protection perspective as it forced third-party developers to double the consent request for the same purposes, which the AGCM found “disproportionate”.
It also said that Apple should have ensured the same level of privacy protections for users by allowing app developers to obtain consent to profiling in a single step.
In March, the iPhone maker was fined €150 million by the French competition authorities for its transparency policy. Earlier in February, the German competition watchdog had also flagged similar concerns in its preliminary findings.
The AGCM also said on Monday that it had conducted this investigation jointly with the European Commission.
“The Italian competition authority adopts its decisions independently. Its decision applies only with respect to Italy and not to other Member States or the EU as a whole,” a Commission spokesperson told Euractiv.
An Apple spokesperson said that the company would appeal the decision: “We strongly disagree with the ICA’s [Italian competition authority, AGCM] decision, which disregards the important privacy protections ATT provides in favor of ad tech companies and data brokers who want unfettered access to users’ personal data.”
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This story has been updated to include responses from the Commission and Apple.