>“The decision not to roll out Siri AI in the EU is Apple’s and Apple’s only,” spokesperson Thomas Regnier told reporters in Brussels, saying there was nothing in the Digital Markets Act to stop the company from introducing new products in the EU.
>“Apple was simply unable to develop interoperability solutions that meet essential EU privacy and security standards,” Regnier said.
Obviously he's going to champion the EU's position, but his framing is internally inconsistent.
1. he claims the DMA doesn’t prevent Apple from launching products in the EU
2. the DMA sets certain requirements which determines whether features can ship in the EU
It's fair to say “the DMA doesn’t ban Siri AI,” but that's not the real issue. The regulation sets conditions, and Apple is arguing those conditions make rollout infeasible. The Commission claims its a compliance problem, not a regulatory block, but the reality is less binary. At a certain point the regulation is self-defeating. What is that point? This is the discussion that the EU lawmakers cannot acknowledge.
They can ship any feature they want, as long as they give users the option to choose alternative implementation of the feature.
"Compliance" isn't a thing without regulation.
Because it's not self-defeating, what would that even be FAANG packing up and abandoning Europe? Worked out splendid for China.
Whereas the EU laws apply to foreign and domestic companies alike, and the goal is consumer protection. The compliance difficulty does not vary between foreign/local.
This is a common sentiment of EU tech regulation proponents. You may want protectionism but that's not really what these laws are about. Why not simply adopt the CCP's policy towards technology?