The European Commission publicly rebuked Apple on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, one day after WWDC 2026, stating that its decision to withhold Siri AI from more than 450 million EU iPhone and iPad users is a voluntary business choice — not a legal obligation — directly contradicting Apple's framing of the Digital Markets Act as an insurmountable barrier. "The decision not to roll out Siri AI in the EU is Apple's and Apple's only," Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told reporters in Brussels, "because absolutely nothing in the DMA prohibits Apple from introducing new products in the EU."
Regnier disclosed a specific procedural detail that Apple's public statement had omitted: rather than engineering a compliant interoperability solution and submitting it for review, Apple had simply requested a blanket 18-month exemption from its DMA obligations — a request regulators rejected outright. "Instead of trying to find a suitable, compliant solution, Apple simply made a request to the European Commission to be exempted from their interoperability obligations under the DMA — and this for at least 18 months," Regnier said. "That's not an option."
EU Says Apple Chose Exemption Over Compliance
The Commission's account directly conflicts with Apple's. Apple's newsroom statement, published alongside the WWDC announcement on June 8, described the company as having designed a detailed technical solution called Trusted System Agent — a privacy-preserving intermediary layer intended to allow rival virtual assistants to access the same on-device features as Siri AI without, in Apple's view, compromising user security. Apple framed the Commission's rejection of this and every other proposal as a "failure to acknowledge these risks" by regulators.
Regnier's counter-narrative cast the Trusted System Agent proposal differently: not as a constructive compliance effort that regulators dismissed, but as the mechanism through which Apple sought to run Siri AI in the EU for 18 months before granting rivals equal access. In the Commission's telling, Apple was asking for a competitive head start, not a security review period. "Guess what? That's not an option," Regnier said, "because it would mean that no AI agent other than Siri AI — by the way, powered by Google — would have an equal chance to be chosen by iPhone users."
Regnier's reference to Google was deliberate: Siri AI is built on a custom 1.2-trillion-parameter version of Google's Gemini model, as confirmed at WWDC 2026. Allowing Apple's assistant, running on a third-party model licensed from Apple's chief mobile rival, to establish itself in the EU market for 18 months before any competing assistant gained comparable platform access was, in the Commission's framing, precisely the kind of competitive advantage the DMA was designed to prevent.
Apple's response to the Commission's rebuttal maintained its position. "There is currently no timeline for Siri AI's availability in the EU on iOS and iPadOS," the company's newsroom statement concluded, citing "the clear dangers to EU users and the regulators' failure to acknowledge these risks."
Why This DMA Fight Differs From App Store Battles
The dispute over Siri AI is structurally distinct from every previous Apple-EU clash under the Digital Markets Act — App Store fees, anti-steering rules, browser choice screens — and understanding why requires a look at what Siri AI actually does under the hood.
Siri AI runs on a three-tier processing architecture. Simple requests — setting timers, dictation, quick lookups — are handled entirely on-device by smaller Apple neural models, with no data leaving the phone. Moderately complex requests route to Apple's Private Cloud Compute infrastructure, which uses stateless, ephemeral processing on custom Apple Silicon servers: data is processed and immediately discarded, with no human access and no use in training future models. The most demanding reasoning tasks travel to Google Cloud servers running Nvidia Blackwell B200 graphics processors, where the 1.2-trillion-parameter Gemini model operates under a contract that bars Google from training on Apple user data.
Because Siri AI operates at the system-orchestration level — with access to messages, emails, photos, calendar, contacts, screen content, and app state — the DMA's interoperability obligations create a technical challenge categorically different from anything prior DMA enforcement has required. Under the Act's Article 6, any capability Apple makes available to its own virtual assistant must also be made available to competing assistants on equal terms. For a payment API or a browser link, that is a bounded engineering problem. For an AI agent with read and write access to every sensitive data type on a device, Apple argues it is a problem with no safe solution under the Commission's interpretation.
Apple's view, stated in its newsroom release, is that EU regulators are demanding that any AI system be given "nearly unlimited access" to a user's device, "including the ability to read and send messages, make purchases, access files, and execute actions across any app," without adequate user visibility or control. The Commission has not publicly specified whether this characterization of its requirements is accurate.
A Pattern Brussels Has Seen Before
This is not the first time Apple has invoked DMA compliance concerns to delay a feature rollout for EU users. When Apple Intelligence first launched in June 2024, the company cited similar regulatory uncertainty as the reason European users would not receive on-device AI features at launch. Those features arrived in Europe several months later, after further discussions with regulators.
The current standoff appears more entrenched. Apple has given no timeline, has publicly attributed the impasse to regulatory intransigence, and according to reporting by AppleInsider, Apple's engineering teams are no longer actively working on a solution to bring Siri AI to EU iPhones and iPads. The Commission, for its part, has given no indication it will revisit its rejection of the Trusted System Agent proposal or the 18-month waiver request.
Apple's DMA compliance record has been contentious throughout. In April 2025, the Commission fined Apple €500 million — the first penalty ever issued under the DMA — for restricting App Store developers from directing users to alternative purchasing channels. Apple appealed, arguing the Commission's requirements were unprecedented and harmful to users; that appeal remains pending before EU courts.
What EU iPhone Users Will and Will Not Receive at iOS 27 Launch
When iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 ship later in 2026, EU users on iPhone and iPad will not have access to Siri AI or any of its associated new features — including a dedicated app for revisiting past conversations, expanded Visual Intelligence, integrated writing tools, and a Siri mode baked into the iPhone Camera app.
The restriction is platform-specific, not geography-wide. EU users on Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro will receive Siri AI at launch, because those platforms carry different obligations under the DMA than the designated core platform services of iPhone and iPad. EU-based app developers will also be unable to test or integrate Siri AI features into their iPhone and iPad applications, a constraint that compounds the competitive disadvantage for the region's software industry.
Siri AI is also withheld from users in China, where Apple is working through separate regulatory requirements unrelated to the DMA.
Regulatory Risk, Revenue Exposure, and US Trade Pressure
Europe represents a significant share of Apple's total revenue — roughly 26 percent in the company's most recently reported fiscal year, making it the second-largest market after the Americas. DMA violations can carry fines of up to 10 percent of Apple's global annual turnover for a first offense, doubling to 20 percent for repeat infringements. On Apple's FY2025 revenue of $416 billion, that ceiling would represent tens of billions of dollars.
The dispute also unfolds against a charged geopolitical backdrop. The Trump administration has characterized DMA enforcement as discriminatory targeting of American technology companies, and President Trump has previously threatened higher tariffs if enforcement continued against US firms. On June 10, 2026, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation — a Washington-based think tank — published a formal brief arguing the United States should use Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 as a tool against what it described as discriminatory EU digital rules targeting American companies.
Regnier's "police officer and speed limit" analogy signals Brussels has no intention of adjusting course under that pressure. "EU law is non-negotiable," he said. "The commission won't give any exemptions, just like a police officer would not exempt a driver from respecting the speed limit."
For more than 450 million EU iPhone and iPad users, the consequence is concrete: the most significant Siri overhaul in the assistant's 15-year history will not arrive at iOS 27 launch, with no agreed path forward and two institutions publicly at odds — one calling the block a legal impossibility it chose to accept, the other calling it a voluntary business decision it chose to make — about who bears responsibility for that outcome.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is Siri AI not available in the EU?
Apple announced at WWDC 2026 that Siri AI will not launch on EU iPhones and iPads with iOS 27 because it and the European Commission could not reach agreement on how to comply with the Digital Markets Act's interoperability requirements. Apple proposed a solution called Trusted System Agent and an 18-month rollout window; the Commission rejected all of Apple's proposals. The two sides publicly disagree about whether the Commission's requirements made compliance technically possible while preserving user privacy.
Did Apple ask the EU for an exemption from the Digital Markets Act?
Yes. According to European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier, rather than engineering a compliant interoperability solution, Apple requested a blanket 18-month exemption from its DMA obligations — effectively asking to launch Siri AI in the EU for 18 months before allowing competing AI assistants equal platform access. The Commission rejected this request as incompatible with EU law.
Will Siri AI ever come to EU iPhones?
Apple says it hopes to bring Siri AI to EU users "eventually" but has given no timeline, and its engineering teams are reportedly no longer working toward a solution while the regulatory impasse continues. The Commission has not indicated it will revisit the rejected proposals. EU users on Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro do receive Siri AI, as those platforms carry different DMA obligations than iPhone and iPad.
Is Apple facing additional EU fines over Siri AI?
No new fine has been announced. The Commission would need to open a formal non-compliance investigation before any penalty could be assessed. Apple was previously fined €500 million in April 2025 for App Store anti-steering violations under the DMA, a fine it is currently appealing; a new Siri AI penalty proceeding would be entirely separate.
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