European Commission: Meta’s fee for rival AI access to WhatsApp is tantamount to a ban

The European Commission believes Meta has not resolved complaints about competing AI services accessing WhatsApp, despite changing terms in March. According to the regulator's preliminary assessment, the introduced fee works similarly to an outright ban: access appears to be open, but in practice it may remain unattainable for competitors.

The essence of the new dispute

The issue concerns how third-party AI services can connect to the WhatsApp ecosystem and compete with Meta's own solutions. In March, the company changed access terms, expecting to address antitrust concerns, but the European Commission reached the opposite conclusion. Brussels believes the logic of restriction has not disappeared: if entry to the platform becomes too expensive, the market result differs little from a situation where entry is simply forbidden.

For the regulator, what matters is not only the formal possibility of connection, but its real economic accessibility. If a competitor must pay so much that the model no longer makes economic sense, this does not look like fair and non-discriminatory access. This is why Meta received a second statement of objections: the Commission demonstrates that the March correction did not close the main issue and did not convince it of a good-faith change in the rules.

Why the tariff did not help

The European Commission's approach in this case is rather strict: the regulator looks not at the label, but at the effect on the market. If a company controlling an important communication channel claims that access is now permitted, but simultaneously presents a bill that filters out external players, authorities may regard this as the same restriction, only in a more neatly packaged form. This is precisely what the Commission is now documenting in its preliminary position.

According to the

European Commission's preliminary assessment, the access fee produces the same effect as an outright ban.

For the AI market, this is a sensitive signal. Messengers have long been more than just a communication channel—they are an entry point for services, bots, assistants, and business communications. If a large platform can close this layer to third-party AI products through pricing, it gains the ability to protect its own ecosystem without formally refusing access. Therefore, the dispute over WhatsApp is not just about one pricing policy, but about how regulators will assess hidden barriers in the AI market.

What Brussels is preparing

The story has now entered a more severe phase. The European Commission did not limit itself to a new statement of objections and is already considering interim protective measures. Such tools are typically employed when authorities believe that waiting for a final decision could entrench competitive harm and change the market faster than the legal procedure concludes. In other words, Brussels fears that letters and negotiations alone are no longer sufficient to preserve working access to the platform for competitors.

• The second statement strengthens pressure on Meta and documents that March's concessions were not accepted.
• Interim measures may require changes in practice even before a final decision in the case.
• For competing AI services, this is a chance to achieve not declarative but working access.
• For large platforms, this is a signal: access pricing can also be considered an anticompetitive tool.

If the Commission proceeds further, this case could become an important precedent for future disputes around integrations, interfaces, and platform access in AI. Companies can no longer count on formal ecosystem opening automatically satisfying regulators' concerns. They will need to prove that conditions truly allow competition, rather than merely creating the appearance of openness on paper. This applies not only to Meta, but to other platform owners as well.

What it means

The European Union is demonstrating that in disputes around AI and platforms, it will scrutinize not only the existence of access, but its real cost for competitors. For Meta, this carries the risk of accelerated proceedings and possible urgent restrictions. For the entire market, it is a warning: you can close an ecosystem not only through prohibition, but through pricing, and regulators are prepared to interpret both scenarios identically if the result for competition is the same.