For the second time, Apple Intelligence is delayed in Europe, and this time there is no timeline

Apple announced on Monday that Siri AI, the rebuilt assistant it unveiled hours earlier at WWDC 2026, will not be available on iPhone or iPad in the European Union when iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 ship later this year. The company said EU regulators rejected every proposal Apple put forward over several months to bring the feature to Europe while supporting other virtual assistants. There is no timeline for when EU users will get Siri AI on the platforms where they use Apple devices most.

“We’re deeply disappointed that our EU users won’t have Siri AI on iPhone or iPad when we share our new software releases later this year,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, said in a statement. He added that the European Commission’s “refusal to engage constructively on solutions that preserve privacy and security” had left the company without a path forward.

The restriction applies only to iOS and iPadOS. EU users will be able to access Siri AI on macOS 27, visionOS 27, and watchOS 27, a distinction that reflects the DMA’s designation of iOS as a gatekeeper platform subject to interoperability obligations. Developers located in the EU will also be unable to test or use the new Siri AI features for their apps on iPhone and iPad.

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Apple’s core argument is that the European Commission’s interpretation of the DMA would require the company to give any third-party virtual assistant the same deep system access that Siri AI receives, including the ability to read and send messages, make purchases, access files, and execute actions across installed apps. Apple said this would have to happen without what it calls “essential protections” for user visibility and control. The company cited security research showing that AI systems can be hijacked to steal personal data, alter files, and change account settings without a user’s consent.

To address those concerns, Apple designed a system called Trusted System Agent, an intermediary that would let competing virtual assistants safely access the same features and capabilities as Siri AI on EU devices. Apple also proposed launching Siri AI in Europe while rolling out the Trusted System Agent gradually over 18 months. The European Commission rejected both proposals, and according to Apple, did not agree to any alternative.

This is the second time Apple Intelligence features have been delayed in the EU because of the DMA. Apple first withheld its AI suite from European iPhones when it launched in the US in October 2024, citing regulatory uncertainty. That initial round of features eventually arrived in Europe with iOS 18.4 in April 2025, but only after months of negotiations. The pattern has now repeated with a more advanced set of capabilities and, this time, no resolution in sight.

The dispute sits within a broader record of friction between Apple and the Commission over DMA compliance. The Free Software Foundation Europe reported in March that none of 56 formal interoperability requests submitted to Apple under the DMA had resulted in the company developing a new solution. Of the 16 publicly disclosed closures, 10 were denied on technical grounds, two were dismissed as already solved, and three were rejected as out of scope. Apple has separately faced enforcement action under the DMA for restricting how developers communicate with users about alternative payment options.

The EU delay compounds Apple’s existing regulatory difficulties in its other major restricted market. In March, Apple Intelligence briefly went live in China without approval, an accidental deployment that exposed the company to potential penalties under Beijing’s AI governance framework. Siri AI will also be unavailable in China when iOS 27 launches, as Apple continues to work through that country’s separate regulatory requirements.

Apple’s framing of the delay places responsibility squarely on the Commission, using language that escalates beyond its previous DMA statements. The company described the regulators’ position as an “extreme interpretation” of the law and accused them of demanding that AI systems be given “nearly unlimited access” to user devices. That characterisation will be contested. The DMA’s interoperability provisions are designed to prevent gatekeepers from using integration advantages to shut out competitors, a principle the Commission has applied consistently across its enforcement actions.

The practical consequence for the roughly 450 million people who live in the EU is that the most significant upgrade to Siri in 15 years, announced the same day that Apple’s partnership with OpenAI is fracturing, will not arrive on the devices they carry in their pockets. They can use it on a Mac, an Apple Watch, or a Vision Pro headset, but not on an iPhone. For a feature built around personal context, conversational history, and always-available assistance, the platform gap is not a minor limitation. It is, for most users, the difference between having the feature and not having it.