In a nutshell: The EU applies an established formula for antitrust violations, but Digital Markets Act breaches are punished far more moderately and carry potential for political considerations.
The European Commission is imposing record-breaking fines against major technology companies — yet the calculation methodology is opaque and partially discretionary. CDOs need to understand the criteria by which regulators proceed.
The European Commission imposed a fine of €890 million against Google on Thursday for breaching the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the EU’s central competition law for tech corporations. Days earlier, Alibaba was hit with €550 million because its AliExpress platform failed to prevent the sale of illegal and dangerous products. These sums pale compared to previous cases: EU courts upheld a €4.1 billion fine against Google in 2024 for Android market abuse (2018), and Meta paid €1.2 billion for GDPR breaches (2023).
In antitrust law, where the Commission has the longest experience, an established formula exists: it begins with a percentage of the annual revenue of the affected product or service. This methodology, refined over decades of court proceedings, accounts for cooperation leniency and penalties for repeat offenders. DMA fines function differently — they are designed less to punish than to incentivize compliance and are correspondingly more moderate. The recent Google fine amounted to only 0.22 percent of Alphabet’s annual group revenue, although the DMA threatens up to 10 percent of global revenue.
The Google fine comprised two components (€460 million for favouring its own search results, €430 million for unfair Play Store practices), which elegantly landed just below the billion-euro mark — precisely at a time of strained transatlantic trade relations. European Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier denied to Politico that political considerations played a role. The Commission always follows “proper procedures” and takes “objective criteria” into account, such as the severity and duration of the infringement, mitigating factors, and the capping of fines at a certain percentage of revenue.
Fines are also controversial under the Digital Services Act (DSA), the EU ruleset for content moderation: Chinese e-commerce corporation Temu argues that a Commission fine of €200 million (May 2024) is “disproportionate” — despite being well below the DSA ceiling of 6 percent of group revenue.
For CDOs, this means: while the legal basis appears objective, substantial discretion remains. Companies should take seriously the distinction between regulatory violation and anticompetitive conduct, as the final fine amount depends on factors that are not entirely transparent and can be influenced strategically and politically.
Source: www.politico.eu · Published 27 July 2026
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