Apple won't ship its new Siri in Europe, and blames the EU's open-access rules

Information Technology 4 min 80 sources

Apple is withholding its upgraded AI Siri from the EU rather than open it to rivals under the Digital Markets Act. Brussels says nothing in the law stops the launch. Plus: the UK and FCC push surveillance down into the phone itself.

Key takeaways

Apple will not launch its new AI Siri in the EU rather than open it to rivals under Europe's Digital Markets Act; the EU says nothing in the law stops the launch, and the real fight is over who sets the terms of access to your data.
The UK (device scanning for illegal images) and the US FCC (ending anonymous "burner" phones) are pushing control in the opposite direction — into the phone itself — raising the same privacy-versus-safety stakes from the other side.
A quieter limit may matter more than any regulator: Morgan Stanley says over 1.3 billion existing iPhones can't run advanced Siri at all, because the features need newer chips and memory.

Apple holds Siri back from Europe, and points at Brussels

Apple said on Tuesday it will not launch its upgraded, AI-powered Siri on iPhones and iPads in the European Union — and it told customers to blame the EU [1][2]. The standoff is over one rule in the Digital Markets Act, the bloc’s competition law that treats the biggest platforms as “gatekeepers” and forces them to give rivals the same access they give themselves [2].

For an assistant that reaches across your photos, messages, apps and calendar to act on your behalf, that access is the whole product. The DMA’s interoperability rule means Apple would have to let competitors — OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, anyone building a rival assistant — reach the same personal data [2]. Apple says that is too much to hand outside companies. “A commission that’s asking us to conduct a very risky experiment on many, many, many tens of millions of users,” marketing chief Greg Joswiak told reporters [1].

Apple asked Brussels for an 18-month exemption and proposed an intermediary layer — a “Trusted System Agent” — to broker third-party access safely [1][2]. The European Commission turned it down flat. “The decision not to roll out Siri AI in the EU is Apple’s and Apple’s only,” spokesperson Thomas Regnier said, adding there is nothing in the DMA that blocks the launch [1]. His sharper line: “Apple was simply unable to develop interoperability solutions that meet essential EU privacy and security standards” [1].

Why now. This isn’t the first feature Apple has parked over the DMA — iPhone-to-Mac mirroring, live AirPods translation and some Maps features were all delayed in the EU before [1]. Siri is just the biggest one yet, and it landed Monday as the centrepiece of Apple’s developer conference [47]. Each side is talking past the other on purpose: Apple frames it as privacy, the Commission frames it as Apple refusing to do the engineering. Both can be true. Europe is roughly 27% of Apple’s sales, and DMA fines can reach 10% of a company’s global turnover — so neither side is bluffing cheaply [1].

The angle. If you build for EU users, the practical question isn’t “is Siri AI good” — it’s whether the assistant layer you depend on will even exist in your market, and on whose terms. Watch whether Apple’s “Trusted System Agent” idea becomes a real standard or stays a negotiating chip. A separate catch undercuts the whole fight anyway: Morgan Stanley estimates more than 1.3 billion existing iPhones can’t run advanced Siri at all — the features need newer chips and 12 GB of memory, available only on iPhone 15 Pro and later [47]. The most consequential limit on Apple’s AI may be the phone in your pocket, not the regulator in Brussels.

The other access fight: rules that reach into the device

The same week, two governments pushed in a different direction — not forcing platforms open, but reaching past them into the phone.

In the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a plan to make tech companies scan devices for nude images of children [16]. Signal, the encrypted-messaging app, called it dangerous and said it “endangers us all” [16]. The objection is mechanical, not just rhetorical: scanning content on the device, before it’s encrypted breaks the promise of end-to-end encryption (where only sender and receiver can read a message). Signal’s argument is that once that scanning machinery exists, it rarely stays pointed only at the thing it was built for [16].

In the US, the Federal Communications Commission proposed forcing telecoms to collect a government ID and physical address from every new and renewing customer — effectively ending the “burner phone,” a phone not tied to your identity at purchase [9]. The stated goal is fraud and crime; 404 Media notes the people most exposed are domestic-abuse survivors, journalists and the privacy-conscious [9].

The thread. Put next to the Apple fight, a pattern shows: control is moving to the layer closest to the person — the device, the SIM, the data on it. The DMA forces that layer open to competitors; the UK and FCC proposals push control into it for the state. Same battleground, opposite directions.

Quick hits

Starlink starts charging rent for the dish. SpaceX’s Starlink now lists a $0 upfront hardware cost and a $10 monthly kit fee, plus a $5–$10 service price rise — the same rental model cable and telecom companies have used for decades [7]. Buying a thing becomes renting it; the recurring charge is the point. If you run Starlink for a site or fleet, your cost math just shifted from one-time to ongoing.

02 · Lesson · why it matters

When the people who set the rules don't ship the product

A rule can force a door open, but it can't make anyone walk through — and when the rule-maker and the builder fight, the people locked out weren't in the room.

Two players, one rule, no agreement

Brussels wrote a rule: if you run a platform big enough to be a gatekeeper, you must let rivals reach the same data you reach. Apple read that rule, looked at its new Siri — an assistant that touches your photos, messages, and calendar — and decided it would rather not ship the thing in Europe at all than open that access to OpenAI and Google [2].

So now two powerful parties each hold half of what the European user wants. The Commission holds the rule. Apple holds the product. Neither can produce the result alone. The Commission can’t build Siri; Apple won’t build it on Brussels’ terms. And the user — the one who’d actually use the assistant — gets nothing, while each side says it’s the other’s fault [1].

This is older than tech. Any time someone sets the terms for a thing they don’t make, you get this shape. A landlord sets rules a tenant must live under. A board sets targets the workers have to hit. A regulator sets standards a company has to meet. The rule-maker has power over the outcome but no hands on the work — and the worker has the hands but not the final say.

A mandate is not a result

Here’s the quiet thing the headline misses. The DMA can require openness. It cannot create it. A law forcing a door open still needs someone to walk through it, and Apple is choosing to stand still [1].

This is the gap between authority and capability. The person who can say “this must happen” is often not the person who can make it happen. They’re forced to negotiate — through incentives, threats, or compromise — with whoever actually does the work. Brussels’ real lever isn’t the rule itself; it’s the 10% fine and the 27% of Apple’s sales that Europe represents [1]. The rule is just the opening line of a negotiation, not the end of one.

And notice how each side reaches past the other for leverage with the public. Apple tells European customers: blame the EU for taking Siri away [2]. The Commission tells them: this is Apple’s choice and Apple’s only [1]. Both are aiming the user’s frustration at their opponent. The user is being recruited as a weapon in a fight they didn’t start.

The terms are the territory

Strip away “privacy” and “competition” and the fight is about one thing: who decides the terms of access. Not whether the door opens — who holds the key and writes the rules for using it.

Apple’s whole counter-proposal, the “Trusted System Agent,” is an attempt to keep that key [2]. If Apple builds the intermediary that brokers access, Apple still controls the gate, just with a friendlier face. The Commission turned it down because it saw exactly that [1]. Whoever sets the terms of access controls the market built on top of it — which is why both sides will spend more energy on the rules of access than on the feature itself.

You can see the same fight running the other way this week. The UK wants to scan messages on your phone before they’re encrypted; the FCC wants to end anonymous phones by tying every SIM to a government ID [16][9]. Different actors, same prize: control of the layer closest to you — the device, the data, the line. The contest is never really about the feature. It’s about who gets to set the terms under which you reach it.

You are downstream of a room you’ll never see

Here’s the part that should land closest to home. You did not vote in this fight. You won’t read the DMA. You weren’t at the Cupertino briefing or the Brussels press room. And yet the tools you’re allowed to have — whether an assistant can see your calendar, whether your messages stay private, whether you can buy a phone without showing ID — are being decided in rooms you’ll never enter, by people optimizing for their own leverage, not your week [1][9][16].

That’s not a reason for outrage. It’s a reason for humility about how much of your own digital life you actually control. The apps on your phone, the features that appear or quietly don’t, the defaults you never chose — most of it is the settled residue of fights like this one, fought by parties whose interests only sometimes overlap with yours.

And there’s a smaller, almost funny twist that proves the point. While Apple and Brussels fight over whether Europeans may have advanced Siri, Morgan Stanley points out that more than 1.3 billion iPhones already in pockets can’t run it anyway — the chips and memory aren’t there [47]. The loudest fight in the room may be over a thing most people couldn’t use even if they won. Seeing the whole means seeing that too: that the contest you’re watching, and the one that actually decides your outcome, are often not the same contest. Hold your read of who’s winning a little more loosely.

03 · Lab · your turn

The Open-Door Standoff

Rehearse forcing a gatekeeper to open up, and feel that a rule sets the terms but the builder's incentives decide the result.