The European Commission has ordered Meta to restore access to WhatsApp for rival tech groups building artificial intelligence (AI) assistants, arguing emergency action is needed to stop competition being harmed before a full antitrust investigation is completed.
The decision marks one of the European Union’s (EU) first big competition interventions in the rapidly developing market for autonomous agents powered by AI models.
The WhatsApp investigation falls under traditional antitrust laws rather than the Digital Markets Act, the EU’s landmark legislation designed to tackle the dominance of the big online platforms. Antitrust cases usually take more time.
“In rapidly evolving markets, competition can be lost long before a final decision is adopted,” said the EU’s competition chief Teresa Ribera on Tuesday, stressing that the decision preserved “choice for citizens across Europe on the AI assistants they want to use with WhatsApp, without that decision being made for them”.
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She added: “We cannot let large digital incumbents leverage their dominance of the past.”
AI start-up Interaction, which develops AI assistant Poke.com, said it was “very happy” with the commission’s decision.
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The move follows an antitrust investigation into the world’s most popular chat app in December last year, after concerns that Meta was using its control of WhatsApp to favour its own AI services.
The interim measures come days after Meta rolled out its new business agent, enabling WhatsApp’s enterprise users to use AI agents to respond to customers as the company tries to unlock a huge new revenue stream.
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The EU is under pressure to wrap up other investigations against US Big Tech companies, such as a prominent case against Google over preferencing its own services in search results and rules on steering users to different applications on the Google Play app store.
The result of those separate investigations, which are expected to include fines for breaching Brussels’ rules, is politically sensitive as US president Donald Trump has hit out at the EU’s regulatory attacks against US companies.
Meta said it would appeal against the decision.
“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. This is regulatory overreach subsidised by the many European companies that pay.”
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
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