The open question hanging over Apple’s rewritten EU App Store terms has an answer, and it is a provisional yes. The European Commission has said it “welcomes” the changes Apple published on 18 August — the ones that scrap the Core Technology Fee and take effect on 1 October — while making clear it is not closing the file. Epic Games, a longstanding legal opponent of Apple’s, called the new structure “junk fees” and says it breaks the Digital Markets Act outright.
What the European Commission actually said about Apple’s App Store changes
The Commission’s response did not arrive as a press release. It was a spokesperson statement given to the Irish Independent, reported by MacRumors and AppleInsider, and as reproduced by both outlets it reads:
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.
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.
Read the second paragraph carefully, because it is doing more work than the first. “Effective implementation” and “full and effective choice” are not decorative phrases — they are the standard the Commission says it will judge Apple against from October. Welcoming a set of published terms is not the same as certifying that those terms produce competing app stores people can actually use. The Commission has left itself room to come back.
Epic’s objection is about arithmetic, not principle
Epic’s complaint is that Apple has replaced one toll with several smaller ones. Its statement opens: “Apple announced new junk fees in the EU that do nothing to open up the mobile app ecosystem to competition, as required by Digital Market Act.” It goes on to argue that the DMA requires Apple to permit web link-outs “free of charge” and to allow “effective use” of competing stores, concluding that “Apple’s terms deliberately violate the Digital Markets Act.”
The numbers behind that give the argument its shape. Under Apple’s own published rates, a developer using alternative payment processing inside an App Store app pays 20%; one that links out to a purchase on the web pays 15% on sales made within seven days of the link tap; and any app distributed through an alternative marketplace or web distribution pays the 5% Core Technology Commission. Standard Apple In-App Purchase is 26%. Reduced tiers of 15% and 10% exist for the Small Business, Mini Apps Partner and Video Partner programmes, and Apple waives the Core Technology Commission for small marketplaces — but Epic qualifies for none of them. On its own Epic Games Store on iPhone in the EU it pays 5%; via an App Store app with a purchase link, 15%. (We covered the full rate table and the child-safety rules when Apple published them, in Apple’s New EU App Store Rules Take Effect 1 October.)
What this decides for people who actually use the phone
Nothing yet, and that is the honest answer. No EU user’s App Store looks different today. The changes land on 1 October, and what a shopper eventually notices depends entirely on a question neither Apple’s announcement nor the Commission’s statement resolves: whether a 5% floor on every transaction outside the App Store, plus 15% on links out, leaves enough margin for a rival store to undercut Apple on price. If it does, EU iPhone owners get cheaper subscriptions and real alternatives. If it does not, they get a longer list of theoretically permitted distribution routes that nobody finds it worth building on — which is roughly the situation the DMA was written to end.
One number is worth keeping in view for anyone comparing platforms: 5% of every digital transaction outside Apple’s own store is a permanent cut on commerce Apple neither hosts nor processes, justified on that support page as reflecting the value of Apple’s tools and technologies. Whether a regulator ultimately accepts that framing is the actual live issue here, not the headline commission rate.
Apple has also said the new EU terms sit in Attachment 14 of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement, which developers can review and accept now, with everything switching on 1 October.
Sources: European Commission statement to the Irish Independent, via MacRumors and AppleInsider
