Meta criticizes EU antitrust demands as ‘aberrant’
Meta Platforms has strongly criticized the European Commission’s antitrust investigations into its Facebook operations, calling the regulator’s requests for information “aberrant” and disproportionate.
The dispute stems from two EU investigations four years ago: one into Facebook Marketplace and another into the company’s handling of user data. Meta argued that the Commission’s document requests were overly intrusive, demanding sensitive materials such as autopsy reports, children’s school records, personal family information, and security details. According to Meta’s lawyer Daniel Jowell, the requests violated principles of necessity, proportionality, and privacy, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.
“The fundamental question is whether the Commission’s power to demand digital documents is effectively unlimited or properly respects privacy and proportionality,” Jowell told a panel of five judges at the EU Court of Justice, where Meta is appealing a lower tribunal’s ruling.
Meta claims the EU had used approximately 2,500 search terms for the data case and 600 for the Marketplace case, requiring it to produce nearly one million documents. The company had previously likened the demands to a “fishing trawler,” highlighting their breadth.
The Commission, represented by lawyer Giuseppe Conte, rejected Meta’s claims. Conte said the authority largely followed the company’s own approach in defining search terms, and that requesting documents responsive to search terms is standard practice globally. He also disputed Meta’s assertion about the number of search terms, stating they numbered in the hundreds, not thousands.
The court is expected to issue its ruling next year. Last year, the EU fined Meta €797.7 million ($923.6 million) for linking Facebook Marketplace to its main social network and imposing unfair trading conditions on other online classified services.
The cases are Meta Platforms Ireland v Commission (Facebook Marketplace) C-496/23 P and Meta Platforms Ireland v Commission (Facebook Data) C-497/23 P.
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