The European Commission ordered Meta to restore free access to WhatsApp's Business Application Programming Interface (API) for rival artificial-intelligence assistants, giving the company five working days to comply. Adopted on Tuesday 9 June as Article 102 antitrust interim measures, the order set a compliance deadline around 15 June1. Article 102 is the EU competition-law power to order emergency intervention against imminent market harm. Meta AI had been the only assistant available on WhatsApp since January 2026, after Meta's October 2025 terms barred third-party assistants and a March revision introduced pricing the Commission said worked like a closed door for startups.
Meta called the order "regulatory overreach", said it will appeal, and faces fines of up to 10% of global turnover if it does not comply2. The measures run until June 2029 or the end of the investigation. Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera said the Commission was acting to prevent harm "before it is too late"3.
CADA, the sovereignty package's cloud law, governs which providers may host public-sector data and does nothing for the channels where European consumer AI actually reaches people. WhatsApp has more than 600 million European users, and Mistral's assistant had been locked out of it for five months. To reach that channel, Brussels used a competition power that predates the whole sovereignty agenda.
This Article 102 decision is distinct from the parallel Digital Markets Act case and from the Supplementary Statement of Objections the Commission sent Meta on 15 April; it is the one that carries the five-day clock. The contrast with the DMA track is sharp: von der Leyen has personally held the Google self-preferencing fine for weeks, yet moved fast here under the older power.
