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The European Commission, the bloc’s competition enforcer, rarely reaches for this tool. Its decision to issue an interim measure against Meta was its first in 17 years. The action grew out of grievances filed by three companies: The Interaction Company of California, developer of the Poke.com AI assistant, French AI startup Agentik, and a Spanish rival.
Those complaints set things in motion. The Commission opened a formal investigation in December 2025, then filed charges against Meta in February alleging breaches of EU antitrust rules. Regulators added further accusations in April after Meta introduced fees for access to the platform.
The dispute traces back to a single change. Meta barred rival AI services from accessing its WhatsApp for Business application programming interface, which lets companies connect their systems to WhatsApp, in October last year, while exempting its own assistant Meta AI. The API is the bridge third-party chatbots use to operate inside the app, so cutting it off effectively pushed competitors out.
Meta later cracked the door open again, but attached a price tag. In March it allowed the competitors back onto the platform for a fee, a move that drew the Commission’s objection. Those fees ranged roughly from a few cents per message and could stack up fast given how many messages a single chatbot conversation involves. Poke.com’s chief executive Marvin von Hagen had already pressed Brussels to step in, arguing the pricing made operating on WhatsApp as unworkable as the original ban.
EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera framed the urgency plainly. “In rapidly evolving markets, competition can be lost long before a final decision is adopted,” she said in a statement. “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,” she added.
Meta pushed back hard. “The European Commission has decided that OpenAI and some of the largest companies in the world can use the paid-for WhatsApp Business product for free,” a company spokesperson said by email. “This is regulatory overreach subsidised by the many European companies that pay. We will appeal.”
The clock is now running. Under the interim measure, Meta must restore rivals’ access to the WhatsApp for Business API on the same terms and conditions that applied before October, within five working days. The order stays in force for the length of the probe, or until June 2029 at the latest. Meta faces a fine of up to 10% of its global annual turnover if found to have breached EU antitrust rules.
For the small AI firms that filed the complaints, the ruling reopens one of the world’s biggest messaging platforms without the costs that had been squeezing them out.
Written by Alius Noreika
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