An example of an App Tracking Transparency prompt
Apple can continue to use its iOS App Tracking Transparency privacy tool in France, but must still pay a fine for having used it before.
France’s Authorite de la Concurrence, its competition authority, first announced an antitrust investigation into Apple and its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) in July 2023.
Now according to Reuters, it has released its conclusion and also fined Apple — but for less than it had previously been expected to.
As with recent reports of the European Union reducing its fines to appease the US and avoid retaliatory tariffs, France has elected to fine Apple $162.4 million, where its regulations allow for up to 10% of a company’s annual global revenue.
More significantly, France has not required Apple to change anything about its ATT tool. Nonetheless, it is fining Apple for having used ATT between 2021 and 2023.
“While the objective pursued by ATT is not in itself open to criticism,” said the regulator in a statement, “the way it is implemented is neither necessary nor proportionate to Apple’s stated objective of protecting personal data.”
The regulator added that Apple’s ATT “particularly penalized smaller publishers,” arguing that the ability to use tracking data was more crucial for these publishers than larger ones.
One 2020 complaint said that Apple failed to stick to EU privacy rules, since while apps and other advertising platforms were limited by the feature, Apple itself wasn’t held to the same privacy standard. While apps could be blocked from tracking via ATT, Apple’s own apps weren’t controlled in the same manner, meaning they were effectively unrestricted from tracking the user.
In 2021, the French Competition Authority said it couldn’t find fault in App Tracking Transparency ahead of its launch. At the time, authority chief Isabelle de Silva said that it couldn’t intervene “just because there might be a negative impact for companies in the ecosystem,” and that they hadn’t found “flagrant examples of discrimination.”
Apple has reportedly responded that it is disappointed with the French regulator’s decision. But notes that the country is allowing ATT to continue exactly as it is.
France has, though, ordered Apple to publish the decision about the fine on its website for seven days, although at time of writing there doesn’t appear to be such a notice on Apple’s French site.
Separately, Germany has been investigating Apple’s use of ATT. In mid-March 2025, Apple lost an appeal against German’s Federal Court of Justice, and is now awaiting a decision on a fine from the country.
Previously the French Competition Authority set a record-breaking fine of 1.1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) against Apple in 2020 over pricing practices that amounted to an antitrust violation. In 2022, an appeals court reduced the fine to $366 million.
