They have five days to open themselves to rivals

If there is something that the European Commission does not like at all, it is that technology companies use their power to create monopolies. It takes years actively fighting these practices with chases and historical fines. The objective is to promote competition and when Meta introduced your AI chatbot on WhatsApp, came under the scrutiny of the Commission. Now, have taken a historic decision: order Meta to open WhatsApp to any rival chatbot.

And that opens the door, for example, for a Mistral or a ChatGPT to sneak into WhatsApp.

In short. This Tuesday, June 9, the European Commission ordered the American giant to restore free access to WhatsApp for competing AI assistants. It is about reversing a situation that Meta has been making more and more complicated for the competition since October 2025.

Previously, other companies had access to the WhatsApp API, but Meta changed its conditions to block rival AI services on the platform, something that began to be applied on January 15 of this year. Their own AI chatbot had arrived and they didn’t want anyone stepping on their toes.

The Commission did not begin to investigate this out of nowhere, but as a result of complaints from several AI assistant companies who reported that Meta was taking advantage of its position of power and dominance of messaging platforms to ‘sneak’ a single chatbot to everyone: its own.

Historical. Meta has five business days to restore that access to rivals and, almost as important as the measure for the user (who will be able to choose which AI system they use in WhatsApp), is the way in which it has been taken. Because it represents the first antitrust precautionary measure that the European Union establishes since 2019 because the investigation has not really ended.

The competition commissioner of the European Union, Teresa Ribera, pointed out that this precautionary order is necessary so that competition between companies is fair in these rapidly evolving markets. He assures that, if such a measure is not taken, the damage would be “almost impossible to repair” and assures that they continue to review whether the restrictions that Meta applied may violate EU competition laws… or not. That is to say, the European Commission has been investigating this case for six months and they are not finished, but they have already made the decision to order WhatsApp to open its API.

Meta’s Response. Not only the European Commission got involved: Meta was already being investigated for the same reason by the Italian competition authority. Since then, the company has taken some actions to prevent an order like this from arriving, offering access to its rivals for a fee and, just a few weeks ago, offering free access to the API up to a certain threshold and, when they exceeded it, starting to charge for its use.

Neither the complainants nor the Commission accepted these measures because they considered that, in practice, it was exactly the same as what Meta was already applying: it was not free access, but, in addition, you had to pay to join the platform.

Obviously, Meta is not amused by this situation one bit, pointing that the EU is using its power to allow some of the world’s largest companies to use its (paid) WhatsApp Business product for free. They claim that Europe is playing along with OpenAI. Whistleblowers, such as The Interaction Company, do seem satisfied.

Now…what. Well there are three options. Or Meta relents and opens its API so that anyone can enter WhatsApp as an AI chat (like when Google in its browser It asks us which search engine we want to use by default Instead of assuming we want yours, go) or pay a fine. That fine is not small: up to 10% of your global annual turnover if you do not comply with these provisional measures.

The third option is for Meta to appeal the precautionary order before the courts of the European Union.

The Apple thing. As we say, the decision of the European Commission is historic because it is a precautionary measure while they ensure that they must continue studying the case. They give Meta only five days to open its tools and let the competition ‘sneak’ into their home and then to wait to see if the decision is ratified or if the Commission backs down.

In any case, it is something that comes just when Apple has once again raised its tone against Europe after the presentation of the new Siri AI by announcing that many of its functions will not be available on iPadOS 27 and on iOS 27 due to EU antitrust policies. But, as with Meta, it is not a fight for privacy (as Apple wants to sell), but rather one for control of its platform and its product so that there is no competition and no one else can play.

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