EU reassesses tech probes into Apple, Google and Meta, FT reports

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(Reuters) -The European Commission is reevaluating its probes into tech giants including Apple, Meta and Alphabet’s Google, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

The tech giants have urged U.S. President-elect Trump to challenge European Union’s regulatory scrutiny against them.

The implications of Trump’s presidency were a factor in the review, one source told the newspaper, clarifying that his victory had not triggered it.

The review could lead to Brussels reducing or changing the range of the probes, and will cover all cases launched since March 2024 under the European Union’s landmark Digital Markets Act (DMA), the report said, citing sources.

The DMA is one of the most stringent regulations targeting tech giants’ market dominance, it dictates what the world’s largest tech platforms can and cannot do, and can impose fines up to 10% of a company’s annual revenue.

All decisions and potential fines will be paused while the review is completed, but technical work on the cases will continue, the newspaper said.

Regulators are now waiting for political direction to take final decisions on the Google, Apple and Meta cases, the report said.

Apple, Meta, Google and the European Commission did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The DMA took effect in 2022 aiming to curb the power of Big Tech and ensuring a level playing field for smaller rivals.

Last week, Meta scrapped its U.S. fact-checking program in one of the biggest overhauls of its approach to managing political content on its services. This comes as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been signaling a desire to mend fences with the incoming Trump administration.

The EU is mulling an expansion into its investigation into whether Trump’s close ally Elon Musk’s social media network X breached its content moderation rules, Bloomberg News reported on Monday.

(Reporting by Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonia Cheema and Mrigank Dhaniwala)