Apple bends to Germany again as the AI Act's enforcement turns local

Germany's Federal Cartel Office has forced Apple into its second concession to EU platform rules this month. The Bundeskartellamt found that Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompts nudge iPhone and iPad users away from third-party apps and toward Apple's own alternatives, tilting what was supposed to be a neutral privacy choice. Facing scrutiny as a Digital Markets Act gatekeeper, Apple has agreed to redesign the prompts for a level playing field, The Verge reports.

It is Apple's second climbdown in as many weeks: it opened iPhone-to-Windows copy-paste to third-party services on 4 August after a DMA interoperability request. Brussels writes the obligations, but national authorities like Germany's cartel office are doing the granular work of catching self-preferencing dressed up as privacy design.

A cartel office can rewrite a pop-up in weeks. Nobody yet knows how to audit what a model has learned.

The Commission wants evidence its rules change behaviour, not just paperwork: the same day it opened a tender studying how marketplace design under the Digital Services Act shapes what users do on the largest platforms. A parallel shift is under way around the EU AI Act. Italy revised its facial recognition decree after pushback from the Commission and its own privacy watchdog; the Dutch data protection authority set a concrete deadline, December 2027, for fundamental rights impact assessments on high-risk AI; and a separate analysis argued data minimisation under the AI Act, GDPR and the incoming Digital Omnibus must now track what a model learns and retains, not just what it collects.

The throughline is the same: writing a rule was the easy part. Days after this site's own retrospective flagged that AI Act enforcement was lagging behind its ambition, today's items show that gap narrowing, unevenly. Blocking a misleading pop-up is a fix a cartel office can order in weeks; auditing what a foundation model has learned is not.

Consumers…

If you use an iPhone or iPad in Germany, and likely soon across the EU, expect Apple's tracking-permission prompt to look different. The redesign should mean a genuinely neutral choice between letting an app track you and blocking it, rather than a screen that made blocking third-party apps feel like the safer option while nudging you toward Apple's own services.

Businesses…

Two deadlines now sit on the calendar for anyone deploying AI in Europe. Dutch companies planning high-risk AI systems know, as of today, that a fundamental rights impact assessment becomes mandatory from December 2027, sooner than it sounds once groundwork is counted. Anyone selling through a very large online marketplace should watch the Commission's new study too: it is designed to produce evidence that tends to justify further DSA interface rules, not to sit on a shelf.

Data minimisation is quietly becoming a running cost rather than a design-phase checkbox: if a model retains or infers information beyond what it collected, that is now a continuous GDPR and AI Act question, not one settled at launch.

Government…

Italy's rewritten facial recognition decree is a data point for other capitals drafting their own AI Act implementing rules: Rome adjusted its text only after direct feedback from the Commission and its national privacy authority, a sign Brussels will push back on national detail, not just headline transposition.

Germany's cartel office keeps showing that DMA enforcement does not run through Brussels alone. National competition authorities are doing the granular, week-to-week work of catching gatekeeper self-preferencing, alongside the Commission's own DMA cases against Google.

Further today

• Germany's Computomics raised €6.3 million, backed by the EU's InvestEU Fund, to scale climate-smart crop breeding software · EU-Startups
• A second report on the same Computomics round detailed how the platform uses machine learning and genomic analysis to predict crop performance under changing conditions · Tech.eu
• Spanish startup HappyRobot reached unicorn status after a $150 million Series C for its business process automation platform · Xataka
• Swiss construction robotics firm Gravis Robotics became Europe's newest unicorn after a €172 million Series A, valuing it at €862 million · EU-Startups
• A separate report on Gravis Robotics put the round at $200 million, solely backed by SoftBank, valuing the company near $1 billion · Silicon Republic
• Revolut founder Nik Storonsky's venture firm QuantumLight closed its second fund at €432 million, more than doubling its debut vehicle · EU-Startups
• Lithuania's LITILIT secured an €8 million loan to scale femtosecond laser systems for industrial use, targeting commercialisation by late 2029 · EU-Startups
• Sweden's SweGaN raised €12.1 million to scale production of gallium nitride wafers used in 5G and electric vehicles · EU-Startups

Sources

• Germany's cartel office found Apple's tracking prompts steered users toward its own apps, prompting a DMA-driven redesign · The Verge Policy
• The European Commission opened a tender for a study on how very large marketplace design shapes user behaviour under the DSA · European Commission Digital Strategy
• Italy revised its AI Act decree on facial recognition after Commission and privacy watchdog feedback · Agenda Digitale
• An analysis argued AI data minimisation must now track what models learn and retain, not just what they collect · Agenda Digitale
• The Dutch data protection authority set December 2027 as the deadline for fundamental rights impact assessments on high-risk AI · Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens