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France’s competition authority fined Apple €150 million over how it implemented App Tracking Transparency (ATT), finding that the consent framework disadvantaged third-party app publishers and advertising providers. The authority did not rule that protecting users from tracking was improper: it said the design and operation of Apple’s system were disproportionate and distorted competition. The decision is under appeal.
What France’s €150 million fine covers
On 31 March 2025, the Autorité de la concurrence (France’s competition authority) issued Decision 25-D-02 and announced a €150 million penalty. It found that Apple abused a dominant position in the distribution of mobile apps on iOS and iPadOS, contrary to Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Article L. 420-2 of the French Commercial Code. The decision identifies the conduct period as 26 April 2021 through 25 July 2023.
Apple Distribution International Limited, Apple Operations International Limited and Apple Inc. were held jointly and severally liable for the penalty. The complaint was brought by advertising and publisher organizations IAB France, MMA France, UDECAM and SRI, followed by a further complaint from GESTE. The authority described Apple as vertically integrated across iPhone and iPad hardware, iOS and App Store distribution, and found it dominant in the relevant iOS app-distribution context. Read the authority’s Decision 25-D-02 summary.
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What ATT does—and what publishers still needed
App Tracking Transparency is Apple’s system-level prompt for asking users to permit an app to track their activity across other companies’ apps and websites. The French authority’s account says publishers could not use the ATT prompt by itself to obtain consent valid under applicable data-protection rules. Publishers therefore continued to use their own consent tools, commonly called consent management platforms (CMPs), to collect consent for relevant processing.
For users, that could mean encountering an ATT prompt as well as a separate consent window from the publisher. The authority objected to how these prompts interacted, not simply to the existence of a tracking choice or a publisher’s own privacy notice.
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Why the authority called the implementation discriminatory
The authority said the consent mechanics treated refusal and consent differently: a user could refuse tracking once, while giving consent required an additional confirmation. Alongside the need to respond to publisher CMP prompts, it found that this interaction made third-party apps excessively complex to use and undermined the neutrality of the framework.
In competition-law terms, the authority characterized Apple’s implementation rules as unfair trading conditions because they were not objective or transparent and were discriminatory. It said the rules harmed app publishers and advertising-service providers, with smaller publishers particularly exposed because they may depend more heavily on third-party data for revenue. The authority concluded that the implementation was neither necessary nor proportionate to Apple’s stated privacy objective.
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That distinction matters: this was not a finding that privacy protection, tracking restrictions or consent prompts are inherently unlawful. The authority’s case was that the way Apple configured and applied ATT imposed an uneven and excessive burden in the iOS app-distribution setting.
CNIL’s role was separate from the competition penalty
The €150 million fine was imposed by the Autorité de la concurrence, not by France’s data-protection authority, CNIL. CNIL provided opinions during the competition investigation. It said modest changes to ATT could make the prompt capable of collecting valid GDPR-compliant consent without requiring duplicate prompts, while retaining protections such as making refusal as simple as consent and clearly mentioning tracking. In the decision’s English summary, CNIL described a “marginal improvement” to the prompt as a way to preserve those protections without creating a complex and excessive system for users. CNIL’s account of the decision.
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A separate Conseil d’État judgment of 14 May 2024 provides privacy-law context but is not part of this competition fine. In a distinct CNIL enforcement matter, it addressed technical data collection through Apple’s IDFV after a user refused ATT tracking, and prior-consent requirements under Article 82 of France’s Data Protection Act for the advertising-related device access at issue. It should not be confused with Decision 25-D-02. Read the Conseil d’État judgment No. 472221.
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The decision addresses Apple’s conduct during the specified period, ending 25 July 2023. Its summary discusses the Digital Markets Act as part of the market context; it should not be read as a description of today’s app-distribution rules as unchanged. Nor does the ruling establish the outcome of a separate Paris judicial proceeding in which associations sought interim suspension of ATT. The available Cour de cassation-hosted record is for RG No. 25/56453; its outcome is not stated here. Cour de cassation decision records.
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Key dates and institutions
| Item | What it means |
|---|---|
| 26 April 2021–25 July 2023 | Infringement period identified in Decision 25-D-02. |
| 31 March 2025 | Date of the competition authority’s decision and announcement. |
| €150 million | Penalty imposed jointly and severally on three named Apple entities. |
| Autorité de la concurrence | Competition authority that issued the fine. |
| CNIL | Data-protection authority that provided opinions during the investigation; it did not impose this penalty. |
The authority’s 31 March 2025 announcement sets out the penalty and its competition-law basis.
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