Brussels, September 19, 2025 – The European Commission (EC) has rejected Apple’s requests to waive key interoperability requirements under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) specification decision issued in March.
According to the document published on the EC website, the authority dismissed the company’s application, lodged in June, seeking a waiver from five of the nine obligations included in the specification decision. The modification requests relate to iOS notifications, proximity-triggered pairing, close-range wireless file transfers, automatic Wi-Fi connections, and automatic audio switching.
Apple argued that complying with the DMA’s specification measures would disproportionately compromise users’ privacy and security, expose sensitive intellectual property, and force the company to divert significant resources into developing new technologies and documentation.
For example, the company claimed that allowing third parties to pre-process iOS notifications before relaying them to connected devices would undermine end-to-end encryption, while enabling automatic Wi-Fi sharing with third-party devices could create new cybersecurity risks.
Apple also contended that several of the measures would unlawfully interfere with its patents, trade secrets, and copyrighted software, effectively compelling it to share or even invent technology for rivals.
The EC rejected Apple’s reasoning, stressing that the DMA’s waiver clause can only be applied in “exceptional and unforeseeable circumstances” tied to technical implementation challenges—not as a vehicle to reargue previously settled legal objections.
“Requesting a blanket waiver of all measures in relation to five out of nine features, less than three months after making the measures binding, can hardly constitute exceptional circumstances,” the EC said. The decision emphasized that Apple had already raised most of its privacy, security, and IP arguments during the earlier administrative proceedings, which were considered and dismissed at that time.
Meanwhile, Apple has simultaneously challenged the EC’s original March 2025 specification decision before the EU General Court.
The EC’s decision does not prevent Apple from submitting future waiver requests if it can demonstrate genuine implementation obstacles, according to the document.
Source: https://competition-cases.ec.europa.eu/latest-updates/InstrumentDMA
