The European Commission issued a supplementary objection statement on Wednesday, ordering Meta to resume the visit of its competitor AI ‘ s assistant to his instant communication platform, WhatsApp. The statement noted that the amendment made by Meta in March to the WhatsApp commercial clause following the earlier intervention of the European Union did not allay the Committee ‘ s concerns.
According to Reuters, the EU implementing agency stated that “the Commission informed Meta that the revised policy would appear to have the same effect, requiring third-party AI assistants to pay to visit the WhatsApp, in violation of the EU competition rules.” WhatsApp announced last October that it was about to change the commercial terms to prohibit third-party AI assistants from using them. In order to prevent serious and irreparable damage to competition, the European Commission ordered Meta to restore access to third-party AI assistants under the same conditions as before 15 October 2025. Last December, the EU launched a competition investigation into Meta. In February this year, the Commission announced that it would take rare medium-term measures against Meta, and that the emergency measures taken to limit market damage during the investigation were indicative of the level of competition concerns in the EU regarding AI.
In March this year, Meta informed the European Commission that after the initial plan to ban the use of third-party AI chat robots, the competitor ‘ s AI assistant would be allowed to operate on the WhatsApp for a year, subject to a fee. The European Commission ‘ s objection was a response to that. In a press statement on Wednesday, the EU Commissioner for Competition, Teresa Ribeira, stated that in fast-growing markets such as AI, the risk of “exclusion” of competitors was precisely why medium-term measures were needed. Meta remains entitled to respond to and defend additional objections. Thereafter, the Commission expects to implement medium-term measures “to prevent these policy changes from causing serious and irreparable damage to the market”. A spokesperson for Meta said that the European Commission was using its power to “freely use whatsApp commercial products from some of the world’s largest companies”.
