The EU General Court in Luxembourg on Wednesday dismissed Apple's challenge to its designation as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act, handing the European Commission a significant victory in one of the first major judicial tests of the bloc's Big Tech law.

In a trio of rulings delivered jointly, the court confirmed Apple's designation in full for the App Store and iOS. It also ruled the company's challenges over its iMessage service inadmissible. A gatekeeper, under the DMA framework, is a firm that controls critical bottlenecks in digital markets.

The judgments from the EU's second-highest court mark the latest chapter in an escalating legal confrontation between Apple and Brussels over the DMA, a law the EU has cast as its most ambitious attempt to rebalance power between Big Tech and the rest of the digital economy.

Apple has filed five separate legal challenges against the Commission under the regulation, making it among the most litigious of the designated gatekeepers.

The court's reasoning

The court threw out Apple's argument that the DMA's interoperability obligations violated its fundamental rights — without ruling on the substance. It found the provision had no direct legal connection to the designation decision.

The court also rejected Apple's bid to have its five App Stores treated as separate services. The stores — covering iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac and Apple TV — all serve the same purpose of connecting developers with end users regardless of the device, the court found.

Apple was designated as a gatekeeper in September 2023, covering iOS, the App Store and Safari. The company had challenged the designation on two grounds: that interoperability obligations imposed on iOS violated its fundamental rights, and that the Commission had wrongly treated its five App Stores as a single platform service.

Responding to the ruling, Apple said it still believed the DMA goes too far, but declined to say whether it planned to appeal.

"We firmly believe the DMA's mandate goes beyond what is lawful and proportionate, threatening to erode decades of privacy and security protections we've built and leaving our users vulnerable to new risks," an Apple spokesperson said. "We will continue advocating for the innovation and privacy our European customers deserve."

Practical consequences

For practitioners, the rulings consolidate the Commission's DMA enforcement position: gatekeeper designations covering multi-device platform services will withstand segment-by-segment challenges, and fundamental-rights objections to specific obligations cannot be deployed against the designation decision itself. Companies contesting DMA measures will need to attack individual compliance decisions and fines rather than the underlying designation. The ruling strengthens Brussels' hand in pending gatekeeper litigation across the board.

An increasingly fraught relationship

The relationship between Apple and Brussels has grown increasingly fraught. The two sides clashed publicly last month after Apple said the DMA's rules had prevented it from launching its upgraded Siri AI assistant in the EU, leaving users in the bloc cut off from the service.

The dispute was followed by a July 1 video call between Apple CEO Tim Cook and EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen that the Commission described as "constructive."

On Tuesday, Brussels indicated it would close its biggest outstanding DMA case, the one against Apple, with no penalty.

Two Apple cases remain pending before the courts: a challenge to the Commission's March 2025 decision requiring Apple to open iOS to third-party developers, and an appeal against the €500 million fine imposed in April 2025 for anti-steering violations.

Wednesday's ruling follows the General Court's partial annulment of Meta's gatekeeper designation last month and a 2024 judgment dismissing ByteDance's challenge in full.