Comment by Someone1234
2 days ago
It is a nationalistic thing. When foreign governments fine "American" companies, they get all up in arms, while constantly asking the US Government to provide better consumer protections and promote competition.
This position commonly ignores that these fines are against these companies position within the market for which they're fined. Meaning that the EU will look at the EU profits and fine relative to those, so they aren't fining the "American" side/profits of the company but rather their "EU" (or Italian in this case) balance sheet.
The EU moved to fining on the basis of global revenues a long time ago to avoid companies using accounting to hide local revenues and avoid fines.
Then again, it could be seen as a tit for tat move regarding how the US applied its laws extraterritorialy using the dollar as a medium so it's bit harsh to complain about the EU when the US started the whole thing.
This whole procedure started after Meta (that meta) reported apple to the authority, it's not even an investigation that was started by the authority of its own volition
Meta reported that they had to ask users for permission before being allowed to track what users were doing on their device.
This is literally about users having the ability to say no.
> When foreign governments fine "American" companies, they get all up in arms
Which is ironic, because Apple is more aligned with China than the US:
Apple CEO Tim Cook "secretly" signed an agreement worth more than $275 billion with Chinese officials, promising that Apple would help to develop China's economy and technological capabilities - https://www.macrumors.com/2021/12/07/apple-ceo-tim-cook-secr...
EU doesn't fine relative to EU profits, it fines relative to global revenue.
You confidently state that EU fines relative to global revenue, but you are wrong.
The case linked above is an Italian competition authority, so I'm any case, no EU level calculation.
There are various legal bases applicable at EU level (competition, GDPR, ...) so depending on the case which rules are applied varies. But in general these guidelines apply, which explicitly state the basis as follows:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
> In determining the basic amount of the fine to be imposed, the Commission will take the value of the undertaking's sales of goods or services to which the infringement directly or indirectly relates in the relevant geographic area within the EEA. It will normally take the sales made by the undertaking during the last full business year of its participation in the infringement (hereafter ‘value of sales’).
E.g. most recent EU cases as per their press website note that they applied these guidelines:
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_... https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
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