Italy's competition authority, the AGCM, opened an investigation into Apple on 16 June 2026 over the company's compliance with interoperability obligations under the Digital Markets Act, according to Reuters. The probe centres on cloud services — iCloud specifically — and whether Apple is meeting the DMA's requirement that gatekeepers allow third-party services to interoperate with their own platforms on fair terms.

This is not the AGCM's first contact with the matter. The authority held a final hearing in December 2025, with Apple Inc., Apple Distribution International Ltd, and other Apple entities represented — a procedural step that preceded the formal opening now confirmed.

The interoperability question around iCloud has been live at the European level for some time. A European Commission market investigation document published in April 2024 recorded findings from Open Web Advocacy that iCloud users face tangible difficulties, framing the issue within the DMA's obligations on gatekeepers. Under DMA Article 6, designated gatekeepers must allow third-party providers real-time access to interoperate with their services — a standard Apple's critics argue iCloud's current architecture does not meet.

Apple's Expanding DMA Exposure

The Italian probe lands inside a broader and accelerating pattern of DMA enforcement activity directed at Apple across Europe.

In March 2025, the European Commission adopted two decisions specifying concrete measures Apple must implement — the Commission exercising its power under DMA Article 8 to make compliance obligations explicit rather than leaving Apple to self-interpret. A month later, in April 2025, the Commission closed a separate investigation into Apple's user choice obligations, citing constructive dialogue — suggesting that where Apple engages, regulators will credit that engagement, but that engagement has not been uniform across all obligation areas.

The financial stakes were established earlier. In March 2024, the Commission fined Apple over €1.8 billion for App Store rules that blocked music streaming providers from steering users to cheaper offers outside the App Store — the first major DMA-adjacent penalty against the company. That fine, issued under competition law rather than the DMA itself, set a visible cost baseline for non-compliance.

Not every regulatory front has moved against Apple, however. In February 2026, the Commission concluded that Apple Ads and Apple Maps do not meet the gatekeeper threshold under the DMA — a decision that narrowed the scope of Apple's obligations in those verticals. Regulators, in other words, are not simply pursuing Apple across every surface; the legal picture is granular, decided service by service.

The AGCM's move is nonetheless notable in structural terms. National competition authorities in EU member states can act in parallel with the Commission under the DMA framework, and an Italian cloud-services probe now adds a second jurisdictional thread to the interoperability question. How the AGCM and the Commission coordinate — or divide — that workload will matter for how quickly Apple faces binding obligations in this specific area.

Worth flagging: the interoperability obligation is arguably the DMA provision with the deepest architectural consequences. Steering users toward alternative browser engines or payment options is a UI and policy problem; genuine cloud interoperability touches API design, authentication, data portability standards, and potentially the underlying storage and sync infrastructure that ties the Apple device ecosystem together. If regulators at either level press for meaningful compliance, the remedies could be technically complex in ways that a fine or a consent screen change is not.

Apple has not, based on the sources available at the time of writing, made a public statement on the AGCM probe. The investigation is at an early stage; formal findings and any potential remedies or sanctions are likely to be months away at minimum.