BRUSSELS, March 18 (Reuters) - Apple ( AAPL ) on Monday

fended off criticism that it has not done enough to open up its

closed eco-system as required under the European Union's Digital

Markets Act, saying it has complied with the landmark

legislation.

The DMA sets out a list of obligations and prohibitions for

Apple ( AAPL ), Alphabet's Google, Amazon ( AMZN ), TikTok

owner ByteDance, Meta Platforms ( META ) and Microsoft ( MSFT )

which the six companies had to abide by on March 7.

Apple ( AAPL ) has in recent weeks announced a series of changes from

allowing apps developers to distribute their iPhone apps

directly to consumers instead of through Apple's ( AAPL ) App Store to

letting developers distribute their apps to users in the

European Union outside of the App Store.

The company told apps developers, business users and rivals

at a day-long hearing organised by the European Commission that

it has redesigned its systems to comply with the DMA.

"We were guided first and foremost by ensuring that we've

complied with the law. And then second, that we did it in a way

that was consistent with our values and consistent with the

language that we've developed with our users over a very long

period of time. And we think we've accomplished that," Apple's ( AAPL )

lawyer Kyle Andeer told the hearing.

"And I think we're focused on it from a user perspective.

Now, it's not to say that we're not focused on the impact of

developers, but I think from our perspective first and foremost,

we'll be tracking very carefully what's the impact of all of

these different changes on the user experience that we've

delivered to our customers for 15, 16 years through the iPhone?"

Meta will present its compliance efforts at a separate

hearing on Tuesday, Amazon ( AMZN ) on Wednesday, Alphabet on Thursday,

ByteDance on Friday and Microsoft ( MSFT ) next Tuesday.

Companies that fail to comply with the DMA risk

investigations that can lead to fines of as much as 10% of their

global annual turnover.