EU General Court Upholds Apple’s DMA Gatekeeper Status in a Clean Win for Brussels

Apple has lost its bid to escape the European Union’s toughest tech regulation. In a trio of rulings, the EU General Court upheld Apple’s designation as a “gatekeeper” under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), dismissing its challenge over the App Store and iOS in full and throwing out a separate case over iMessage as inadmissible — handing the European Commission one of its cleanest enforcement wins yet.

The judgments, delivered together by the Luxembourg court on 9 July 2026, confirm that Apple must comply with the DMA’s obligations as a designated gatekeeper. Apple remains the most litigious of the law’s targets, having brought five separate actions against the Commission, and a spokesperson said the company still considers the DMA’s mandate disproportionate — without confirming whether it will appeal to the Court of Justice of the EU.

What the court ruled

The General Court rejected Apple’s core arguments across the board. It upheld the gatekeeper designation, declined to disturb the Commission’s decision on the App Store and iOS, and found the iMessage challenge inadmissible. On the substance Apple most wanted to contest — whether the DMA’s interoperability obligations breached its fundamental rights — the court did not engage, finding no direct legal connection between that provision and the designation decision itself, and so declining to rule on the merits.

The “five App Stores” argument

One of Apple’s more creative arguments was that its five App Stores — across iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac and Apple TV — should be treated as separate services, which could have affected how the DMA’s thresholds applied. The court dismissed it, holding that each store performs the same core function of connecting developers with end users, and so they could not be carved up to avoid designation.

Interoperability sidestepped, not settled

The most consequential part of the decision may be what the court did not decide. By disposing of the interoperability challenge on jurisdictional grounds rather than on its merits, the General Court left open whether a better-pleaded fundamental-rights argument could still succeed. That question is likely to resurface as more of the Commission’s original 2023 gatekeeper designations reach appeal — so while the procedural route is narrowing, the substantive fight over interoperability has merely been deferred.

Where it fits in the DMA case law

The ruling slots into an increasingly settled body of DMA jurisprudence. It follows the General Court’s partial annulment of Meta’s gatekeeper designation the previous month and its 2024 dismissal of ByteDance’s challenge — a mixed but maturing record that is giving the Commission a clearer template for how gatekeeper status is tested and defended. For the regulator, the Apple result is a notable consolidation of that template.

What is still outstanding for Apple

Two significant Apple matters remain live: a challenge to the March 2025 order requiring it to open iOS to third-party developers, and an appeal against the €500 million fine imposed the same year for anti-steering breaches. The decision also lands weeks after Apple and the Commission traded public criticism over EU rules delaying the European rollout of Apple’s upgraded Siri assistant — a dispute that prompted a 1 July call between chief executive Tim Cook and the Commission’s tech chief, Henna Virkkunen, which Brussels described as constructive.

What it means for platform businesses and their advisers

For competition and technology counsel, the practical message is that the ways to resist a gatekeeper designation are shrinking. Threshold-parsing arguments like the App Store carve-up, and rights-based challenges brought at the designation stage, are proving hard to win — and the court’s willingness to dispose of them on admissibility and jurisdiction means future fights will have to be waged on the merits it has so far avoided. Apple’s pending appeal against the €500 million fine will be an early test of that narrower ground. Advising a platform on DMA exposure now means focusing less on whether designation can be undone and more on how compliance obligations — interoperability, anti-steering, data access — are met and, where necessary, contested on their substance.