The European Commission this week imposed interim measures on Meta Platforms, ordering the company to restore free access to the WhatsApp for Business API for third-party general-purpose AI assistants - a binding instruction that takes legal effect before any final ruling on the underlying antitrust case.

The decision, issued under case number AT.41034, marks the second time the Commission has used interim measures under Regulation 1/2003 since the tool was first deployed against Broadcom in 2019. That context matters. Interim measures under Article 8(1) of Regulation 1/2003 are an exceptional instrument, reserved for situations where there is, at first sight, an infringement of competition law and where the risk of serious and irreparable damage to the competitive structure is pressing enough that waiting for a final decision would itself cause lasting harm.

The Commission first opened formal proceedings in this case on 4 December 2025. Today's decision is the culmination of six months of escalating formal steps, oral hearings, and supplementary objections - all focused on a single technical policy change Meta introduced on 15 October 2025.

What Meta changed on 15 October 2025

The WhatsApp for Business API is the technical interface through which businesses connect their own systems to WhatsApp. Before 15 October 2025, the WhatsApp Business Solution Terms contained no restriction on third-party general-purpose AI assistants. Businesses could integrate tools from providers including OpenAI, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, and Spain's Luzia, developed by Factoria Elcano, directly into their WhatsApp workflows.

On 15 October 2025, Meta updated those terms with a new prohibition. The revised policy banned general-purpose AI assistants from the API when AI capabilities were the primary functionality being offered - as opposed to incidental or ancillary support features. The restrictions applied immediately to new AI providers. Existing providers were given a grace period, with full enforcement taking effect on 15 January 2026.

The practical result was that only Meta's own AI assistant, Meta AI, remained accessible through WhatsApp. According to the European Commission, this constituted a refusal to provide access to an infrastructure that had been developed for and previously open to third parties.

Italy's competition authority, the AGCM, was the first to act, expanding an existing investigation and launching precautionary proceedings against Meta on 25 November 2025. Brazil's Administrative Council for Economic Defense, CADE, followed in January 2026, finding prima facie evidence of dominance in Brazil's instant messaging market, where WhatsApp reaches more than 150 million users with 99% of smartphone owners having the application installed.

The Commission's escalating formal steps

The Commission's own proceedings moved quickly by the standards of EU antitrust enforcement. The formal opening of proceedings on 4 December 2025 was followed on 9 February 2026 by a Statement of Objections, setting out the Commission's preliminary view that Meta had breached Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Article 54 of the EEA Agreement. Those provisions prohibit the abuse of a dominant position that may affect trade and restrict competition within the Single Market.

Meta submitted its response on 2 March 2026. The following day, on 4 March 2026, the company published a revised policy. The outright ban was lifted. But Meta's revised terms introduced a fee structure applicable to third-party general-purpose AI assistants seeking access to the WhatsApp for Business API.

As PPC Land reported in April 2026, Brussels assessed the fee model and concluded it produced the same outcome as the original ban. On 15 April 2026, the Commission issued a Supplementary Statement of Objections, finding that the pricing framework was, at first sight, in practice equivalent to the previous access prohibition. The geographic scope of the investigation was also expanded at that stage to cover Italy for the first time, aligning the Commission's proceedings with the AGCM's earlier enforcement action.

An oral hearing took place on 5 May 2026, with publication confirmed on 22 May 2026. Responses to the Statement of Objections had been received on 2 March 2026, published on 22 April 2026.

What today's decision requires

According to the European Commission, today's interim measures decision orders Meta to re-instate access for third-party general-purpose AI assistants to the WhatsApp for Business API under the same terms and conditions that were in place before 15 October 2025. Before that date, access was notably free of charge for all such AI assistants.

Meta must comply within 5 working days of the decision.

The measures remain in force until the Commission adopts a final decision on the case. The substantive investigation on the merits of all parts of the case is still ongoing, according to the Commission. There is no legal deadline for an antitrust investigation to conclude.

Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice-President for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition at the European Commission, stated: "Today, we require Meta to restore access to WhatsApp for competing AI assistants while we investigate whether the restrictions may infringe EU competition rules. In rapidly evolving markets, competition can be lost long before a final decision is adopted. This is why these interim measures will remain in place for the duration of the investigation, in order to prevent harm that would be almost impossible to repair. These interim measures will safeguard competition in the growing market for AI assistants, by preserving a key entry point to reach consumers in Europe - WhatsApp - and allowing AI companies to innovate, scale up and reach their full potential. With today's decision, we also preserve choice for citizens across Europe on the AI assistants they want to use with WhatsApp, without that decision being made for them."

Three findings underpinning the decision

The Commission's conclusion that interim measures are warranted rests on three specific findings.

First, according to the Commission, Meta has at first sight held a dominant position in the EEA-wide market for consumer communication applications since at least January 2023, with WhatsApp as the central instrument of that dominance.

Second, the Commission found that Meta has been, at first sight, abusing this dominant position by preventing competing general-purpose AI assistants from using the WhatsApp for Business API - constituting a refusal to provide access to infrastructure that was developed for and previously open to third parties.

Third, there is what the Commission describes as an urgent need to prevent a risk of serious damage to the competitive structure in the growing market for general-purpose AI assistants. The Commission's reasoning on urgency centres on the nature of network effects and user adoption dynamics in AI product markets. Meta's policy change, according to the decision, risks harming competition at a key moment in the development of that market, where smaller players and new entrants can challenge large incumbents. Once those entrants are foreclosed from a platform of WhatsApp's scale, the Commission argued, the competitive harm is difficult or impossible to reverse.

The Broadcom precedent and what makes AT.41034 unusual

According to the press release from the Commission, this is only the second decision imposing interim measures under Regulation 1/2003, following the Broadcom case in 2019. That distinction carries weight. The rarity of the tool reflects the high legal threshold that must be met: at-first-sight infringement combined with urgency and the prospect of irreparable harm.

The Broadcom case concerned exclusivity clauses in chipmaker contracts with six major customers. The Commission ordered Broadcom to stop applying those clauses while the investigation continued. The case settled approximately one year after formal proceedings opened, with Broadcom committing to suspend all relevant exclusivity arrangements for a period of seven years.

The Meta case is structurally different in at least one significant respect. The relevant infrastructure - the WhatsApp for Business API - is not a physical supply chain or component. It is a software interface governing access to a messaging platform with more than 2 billion users worldwide. The Commission's argument is that control of this interface, combined with Meta's dominant position in consumer communication applications, gives Meta the ability to shape competitive outcomes in the adjacent market for AI assistants. That argument has implications beyond the specific facts of AT.41034.

Enforcement and fines

The Commission's press release outlines the financial consequences of non-compliance. If Meta either intentionally or negligently contravenes the interim measures decision, the Commission may impose fines not exceeding 10% of the company's total turnover in the business year preceding the infringement. To compel ongoing compliance, daily periodic penalty payments are available, not exceeding 5% of the average daily turnover in the preceding business year.

The Commission fined Meta 200 million euros in April 2025 for separate DMA violations relating to the company's advertising consent architecture. Meta formally appealed that decision on 2 July 2025, arguing the Commission had ignored established European Court of Justice precedent on consent-based advertising models. The AT.41034 case and the DMA proceedings are legally distinct, but they are part of the same dense regulatory environment that Meta now navigates across multiple fronts.

Earlier this week, on 3 June 2026, the EU General Court delivered a split ruling in Case T-1078/23, partially annulling the Commission's September 2023 DMA gatekeeper designation of Meta. The court struck down the designation of Facebook Marketplace as a core platform service while confirming that Facebook Messenger remains a gatekeeper service under the DMA.

What the WhatsApp API decision means for AI distribution

For developers and businesses building AI-powered customer service or conversational tools on WhatsApp, the interim measures decision re-opens a distribution channel that had been closed for more than seven months. Before 15 October 2025, third-party AI assistants could use the WhatsApp for Business API without paying a fee specific to their AI functionality. The Commission's order restores those terms.

The affected platforms include some of the most commercially significant AI services operating in Europe. Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Perplexity were among the providers named in earlier enforcement proceedings by Italy's AGCM. Spain's Luzia and Colombia's Brainlogic AI (Zapia) were identified in Brazil's CADE proceedings. These are not experimental projects; they are commercial products with existing user bases and business integrations.

WhatsApp's scale makes the API a substantial distribution question. The platform has more than 2 billion users worldwide and is a primary communication channel for businesses across the EEA. For AI assistant providers competing against Meta AI - which is deeply embedded in WhatsApp's native interface - access to the Business API is one of the few technical paths to reaching users within the same environment.

As PPC Land has tracked throughout this case, the enforcement pattern reflects a broader shift in how competition authorities are treating AI infrastructure. The question is no longer only about prices or market shares in established markets. It concerns access to the technical interfaces and platform entry points that determine which AI services can reach scale.

Meta has simultaneously been expanding its own AI presence on WhatsApp. The company launched an Incognito Chat feature for Meta AI in May 2026, using Trusted Execution Environments to prevent even Meta from reading conversations. And in early June 2026, Meta announced the Meta Business Agent, a global AI customer service product spanning WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. Those product developments continue regardless of today's interim measures order, which governs API access terms, not Meta's own product.

What this means for the marketing and ad tech community

The interim measures decision has direct relevance for marketers and businesses using WhatsApp as a customer engagement channel. A significant number of commercial deployments on WhatsApp integrate third-party AI for functions including customer service automation, lead qualification, and conversational commerce. Those integrations had been disrupted or constrained since October 2025.

The restoration of pre-October 2025 access terms means the fee-free API access that had underpinned many of those deployments is reinstated, at least for the duration of the investigation. Businesses that had paused integrations or shifted to alternative approaches will need to reassess their technical and commercial arrangements.

More broadly, the case signals a regulatory framework in which the competitive terms of AI distribution on major platforms are subject to antitrust enforcement in real time - not only after markets have consolidated. That is a different environment from the one in which most digital advertising and marketing technology businesses have operated over the past decade.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The European Commission, acting through its Directorate-General for Competition, issued an interim measures decision against Meta Platforms, Inc. The decision affects third-party general-purpose AI assistant providers - including services from OpenAI, Microsoft, Perplexity, and others - seeking access to WhatsApp's business infrastructure across the European Economic Area.

What: The Commission ordered Meta to re-instate free access to the WhatsApp for Business API for rival general-purpose AI assistants, under the same terms and conditions that applied before 15 October 2025. Meta must comply within 5 working days. The order remains in force until a final decision is adopted in the underlying antitrust investigation, case AT.41034.

When: The interim measures decision was issued on 9 June 2026. The underlying conduct began on 15 October 2025, when Meta introduced policy changes that barred third-party AI assistants from the API. Formal proceedings opened on 4 December 2025. Today's decision is the latest step in a sequence that included a Statement of Objections on 9 February 2026, Meta's revised fee-based policy on 4 March 2026, and a Supplementary Statement of Objections on 15 April 2026.

Where: The decision applies across the European Economic Area. The investigation is headquartered in Brussels and is managed by the Commission's Directorate-General for Competition. Parallel enforcement actions have been taken in Italy by the AGCM and in Brazil by CADE.

Why: The Commission concluded that Meta holds a dominant position in the EEA market for consumer communication applications and that its exclusion of third-party AI assistants from WhatsApp constitutes an abuse of that dominant position. The interim measures were triggered by an assessment that Meta's conduct risks causing serious and irreparable harm to competition in the growing market for general-purpose AI assistants - harm that would be difficult to reverse once it materialises, and that cannot wait for the outcome of a full antitrust investigation.