Wesley Hilliard, reporting for AppleInsider last week:

A report from Irish Independent detailed the European Commission’s response to Apple’s new business terms for the EU. They share that they welcome the changes and will monitor Apple’s implementation of the terms.

Here is the EC’s full statement:

“The Commission welcomes Apple’s changes to their business terms, which follow a close dialogue between the Commission and Apple after the Commission issued a non-compliance decision related to Apple’s steering terms as well as preliminary findings related to alternative app distribution, both in April 2025,” the spokesperson said.

“Following today’s announcement, the Commission will monitor Apple’s effective implementation of the new terms. Under the DMA, users in the EU have a right to full and effective choice of alternative app distribution channels.”

The point of the DMA was to open up competition and choice for developers, which the EC seems to believe Apple’s terms have accomplished.

I don’t think that was ever the point of the DMA. It’s what a lot of developers who themselves wanted more competition and choice — and freedom — on iOS presumed was the point of the DMA. The European Commission paid lip service to these ideals, which encouraged people to think these ideals were the point of the DMA. But what I’ve consistently argued is that the only actual point of the DMA is for the European Commission to impose unnecessary bureaucracy and inconvenience into major markets where it previously had no footprint. They had no noble goal. They just wanted to erect a bureaucratic structure that clearly shows “The European Commission was here and did something.” Impose copious fines on Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta; inconvenience those companies and their users in the EU; all to show that something has been done. (And to cash the checks from the fines they eventually collect.)

That’s why the text of the DMA itself is so hard to read and understand. There is no clear intent of “opening up competition and choice” hidden in the murky, impenetrable prose of the DMA. The murky impenetrableness of the law is a reflection of its actual intent: murky impenetrable bureaucracy.

Here’s a commenter on Hacker News (via Michael Tsai’s roundup) who can’t believe it:

This is bonkers, I can’t believe the EU Commission agreed to it. The main issue that the DMA was about still remains: Apple retains ultimate control over app developers’ dealings with users.

The status quo that the EU should have pushed for, and which Article 6(7) of the DMA requires, is one where a developer can distribute iOS apps to users without ever entering into any contractual relationship with Apple. The OS APIs that most apps use are already paid-for by the user when they buy the device. Apple wants to double-dip and charge developers for the value that the users already have by virtue of owning their iDevices with all the necessary iOS paraphernalia in them.

If you believed that the point of the DMA was to open up competition, choice, and freedom for developers, yeah, I bet it does seem bonkers that the European Commission has signed off on compliance where Apple charges 15 percent commissions on links to the web from apps distributed on the App Store, and that Apple will collect a 5 percent Core Technology Commission even for apps distributed on third-party app marketplaces, using third-party payment processing. But if you believe, as I do, that the point of the DMA is to impose obvious regulatory burdens and bureaucracy upon Apple (and Google, and Microsoft) — and upon the EU citizens who use those companies’ “gatekeeping” platforms — then it is completely unsurprising that the European Commission “welcomed” these changes. The Commission has gotten everything it wanted from Apple:

• Third-party app marketplaces (no matter if almost no one uses them).
• A growing list of features withheld from the EU, like iPhone Mirroring and Siri AI (this shows that the DMA “works” and they’ve done something).
• A bunch of fines.

I’m sure some of you think I’m all wet in my argument that the point of the DMA was merely to impose ongoing bureaucratic complexity. But my view jibes with the reality of how it’s worked out. Compare and contrast with the Mobile Software Competition Act in Japan. Apple complied with the clearly stated requirements of the MSCA with no drama, Japanese users aren’t missing out on features like iPhone Mirroring, and the only delay for Siri AI in Japan is language support. Japanese iOS users get all the “good parts” of Apple’s regulatory compliance that EU users do, with none of the rather severe hindrances.

Chloe Swarbrick: 'Yes, I alone will decide how much profit you will make. Or not.'

"One of the most valuable inheritances from Roman law is the prohibition on retroactive legislation; the principle that what is lawful today cannot be declared unlawful tomorrow and punished after the fact. Civilisation depends on this. Without it, citizens cannot plan, cannot trust the law, and cannot defend themselves against the State. The rule of law collapses into rule by law — law as a weapon. ...

"The Green Party’s supermarket policy is a textbook example of how modern ideological movements drift toward retroactive punishment. Their proposal to penalise 'excessive profit' or 'price gouging' sounds simple until you ask the only question that matters: excessive according to what standard?

"So far, no standard exists.

"Chlöe Swarbrick has been unable to articulate: 

• how “excessive profit” would be defined, 
• what baseline would be used, 
• whether the metric would be tied to past behaviour, 
• or how businesses could know in advance whether they were compliant.

"Without a clear, objective, forward‑looking definition, the policy becomes retroactive by default. It allows the State to declare, after the fact, that last year’s lawful profit was actually this year’s unlawful 'gouging.' That is not regulation; it is ex post facto punishment disguised as economic justice.

"This is precisely the danger Roman jurists warned about. Law must be knowable before action, not invented after action."

~ Colinxy from his post 'Retroactive Law: When the Past Becomes Illegal'

Mark Carney “now leads the west,” tweeted Anthony Scaramucci the other day. It was a reaction to the Canadian prime minister’s decision to pull out of trade talks with the United States at the last minute on Friday night — “something that few other world leaders before him have dared to do,” as The New York Times’ Matina Stevis-Gridneff put it. “We’re at a juncture where other countries may be very closely watching how this plays out as they also are becoming increasingly frustrated with the demands the U.S. is placing on them in these largely one-sided trade agreements,” was how one trade expert put it to The Washington Post.

Prime Minister Carney has certainly been keen to fill the role of global head of the resistance to the Trump administration. A Wall Street Journal story last month highlighted the degree that Carney has been pressing Europe’s leaders behind the scenes to accept the premise that “the old America isn’t coming back” and adopt a less conciliatory stance towards the White House in response.

Carney, I do think, dislikes the United States quite deeply, both philosophically and personally, and holds an ideology that posits Europe and England as morally superior civilizations and better allies for Canadian interests. I think there’s plenty of takers for this worldview, in Canada, Europe, and even America itself, and to the degree Carney is seen as the man embodying a pivot away from a repulsive, belligerent United States and towards some new alliance of calm and principled western powers who treat each other with respect and fairness, Carney’s international standing will continue to rise.

Yet as I wrote previously about his Davos’ speech, Carney is also a Canadian politician who has to operate within the confines of Canadian domestic politics. There is a tension between these two roles he seeks to occupy simultaneously — the grandness of being a leader of a principled liberal world order, championing transnational interconnectedness, and the smallness of being a Canadian politician, captive to the petty hangups of an often deeply insecure, parochial country and all its assorted taboos, shibboleths, and mythologies.

Carney spoke to the Canadian public on Saturday, offering three reasons why his government walked away from trade talks with the US administration. Two of the three were broadly sympathetic by objective standards: Trump apparently insisted on keeping tariffs on certain types of Canadian-made trucks even as automobile tariffs were lowered on other makes, and evidently wanted “language” in the Canada-US deal that would “restrict our ability to have other trade deals” with other countries, presumably by locking Canada into a so-called “fortress North America” continental tariff regime. But Carney’s third reason for walking away was odd, and has been subject to considerably less media and political scrutiny precisely because it’s so odd.

Here is how the prime minister put it:

I’ll give you a third. Continual efforts, always resisted, as I said in my remarks, and always will be resisted, efforts to restrict our protections of our language, our culture, and in effect our sovereignty.

The “as I said in my remarks” refers to a statement earlier in his press conference where he said (translated from French):1

We were not prepared to compromise on our sovereignty, the protection of the French language, and our culture. To our American colleagues, let us be clear: for my government and for Canada, these issues were never on the table, even though the United States tried until the very last minute.

Later on, Carney spoke of the Americans trying to “influence our cultural support and language protections,” and characterized this as the poison pill that ended the talks once and for all (again, in French):

We were ready and close to having a comprehensive agreement that would be fair to both countries. We were close to that happening, and it seemed that we were close to reaching a comprehensive and fair agreement with the United States. But they made changes, including threats on the French language and Quebec culture and Canadian culture. That is not acceptable. That would never be acceptable, and for that reason, that marked the end of the stage of negotiations. [emphasis added]

Asked for more specifics, this exchange ensued (again in French):

Q: You talked about compromises on our sovereignty, the French language and culture and key sectors. What specific concessions were you not prepared to make?

CARNEY: Well, for example, there were suggestions about discoverability online involving Canadian culture and French media. That’s one example. As well as subsidies and support for our culture and the French language, and even information provided on Canadian products. So there are a number of examples. And it was unacceptable right from the start. But the Americans kept trying and trying and we said no. Ultimately it’s simple. That was never on the table for Canada. And it would not have been acceptable to Canadians.

Carney must provide greater clarity to Canadians about what exactly he means by all this. While Canadians might tell pollsters they agree in the abstract with the need to “protect Canadian culture,” Carney’s sticking points appear to be extremely narrow, interest group-driven things — particularly Quebec interest group driven things — that I can’t imagine most Canadians expect to be beyond the realm of compromise in a multi-billion dollar treaty with Canada’s largest trade partner.

Ottawa spends millions every year subsidizing what is euphemistically called the Canadian “cultural sector,” including movies and TV shows few Canadians watch, magazines few Canadians read, and radio stations few Canadians listen to. In 2023, the Trudeau government passed Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, which promises to boost the discoverability of government-certified “Canadian content” on streaming platforms in ways that have yet to be fully decided. And Ottawa of course legally mandates French-English bilingual packaging for all goods sold across Canada, including goods imported from other countries.

Some of these policies are reasonable things for American trade negotiators to oppose. Complaining about Canadian cultural subsidies seems a bit irrelevant, just given it’s hard to argue American cultural products are in any way failing to compete in the Canadian marketplace. But the Online Streaming Act, which I have long opposed, very explicitly seeks to discriminate against American content by putting Ottawa’s finger on discoverability algorithms in a way that will harm the interests of American creators seeking to build a Canadian audience through platforms like Netflix and YouTube. Bilingual packaging is likewise a burdensome obligation Canada imposes on American goods of which no comparable ask exists in the opposite direction.

Despite Carney’s grand language, it is exceedingly difficult to believe it “would not have been acceptable to Canadians” if he moderated government policy in some of these realms of contention — say, by repealing C-11 (which he’s already significantly watered down anyway), agreeing to cuts in cultural subsidies, and introducing a quota or something for imports of goods in English-only packaging. The hardline stance he actually took, by contrast, the idea that it was this particular bundle of issues that “marked the end of the stage of negotiations,” (a “red line” as an unnamed aide would later put it) only makes sense in the context of Canadian domestic politics, particularly the disproportionately large role the province of Quebec plays dictating the priorities of the Liberal Party.

A large portion of Quebec’s French-Canadian majority believe themselves to be a severely endangered people on the brink of cultural extinction. Massive federal subsidies to Quebec cultural industries are one of the few perceived cures, along with an uncompromising insistence that the French language be used in any realm of life where the federal government holds even the slightest whiff of jurisdiction. Carney’s Liberals won 44 of Quebec’s 77 seats in last year’s election — a quarter of his parliamentary caucus. It is very difficult to understand why Carney does anything he does without understanding his reliance on Quebec votes, as well as his insecurity that the province may not fully trust him, an English-Canadian Anglophile with shaky French skills and no personal connection to the province, as an avatar of their interests. It is the same reason why the prime minister has been so dogmatically unwilling to compromise in trade talks on the one issue in which Canada is unambiguously in the wrong — the country’s hideously protectionist dairy industry, based in Quebec.2

In the hours since Carney’s decision to abandon trade negotiations with the Trump administration was announced, Canadian pundits have applauded in unison that “no deal is better than a bad one.” Carney’s high poll numbers ensures the public largely defers to his judgment about what’s good or bad, but a higher standard of proof should be demanded.

If Carney was prepared to walk away from a flawed but better-than-nothing trade deal — one comparable to what the Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans, and British have already secured — it is appropriate to expect him to reveal what exactly made this deal so much worse, ideally by proving that Trump expressed a level of greed and meanness towards the Canadians that was appalling even for him. But if it was merely a standard Trump deal that Carney opposed for basically domestic political reasons, to pander to Quebec voters and lean into his anti-American tendencies that are popular elsewhere, then the prime minister has revealed himself to be a much smaller man than the world thinks.