Although the report is advisory, it plays an important role in the final decision of the institution.
François Pellegrini, who prepared the report, launched an investigation last year after a complaint filed by the France Digitale association, which represents the majority of French digital entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
In a complaint to France Digitale, the iPhone maker claimed that Apple's legacy operating system, iOS 14, did not comply with EU privacy protection requirements.
The association claimed that the approval question directed to iPhone users in order to prevent or allow applications installed on the phone to send advertisements is not asked for Apple's own advertisements, and that the system in these cases defines campaign advertisements and sends "targeted advertisements" without the "clear prior approval" of the user.
The service, called App Tracking Transparency, offered by Apple to its users, offers the option to prevent the activities of iPhone users from being tracked on applications and websites owned by other companies.
However, Pellegrini said that this system, which prevents the collection of users' personal data, did not obtain users' consent in Apple's previous operating system version iOS 14.6, and therefore "violates" the privacy rules under the European Union's ePrivacy directive.
He added that this preliminary permission is available in iOS 15, the next version of Apple's operating system.
Gary Davis, Apple's director of privacy, objected to the reporter's conclusions at the hearing, saying that the US firm was committed to protecting the privacy of user data. Davis, who wanted the amount of the sentence to be reduced, also demanded that the sentence not be made public.
