In a major legal ruling under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), the General Court of the European Union has partially annulled the European Commission’s 2023 decision designating Meta Platforms as a digital “gatekeeper.” The split judgment provides a significant victory for Meta regarding its Marketplace platform, while firmly upholding strict regulatory oversight for its Messenger communication service.
The legal battle dates back to September 2023, when the European Commission designated Meta as a gatekeeper under the DMA framework. The regulatory body identified several of Meta’s core services as vital digital gateways connecting businesses to consumers, notably classifying Facebook, Messenger, and Marketplace as distinct, core platform services. Meta subsequently launched an appeal seeking to overturn the gatekeeper classification for both Messenger and Marketplace, arguing they did not function as independent digital gatekeepers in the manner the Commission claimed.
The General Court completely rejected Meta’s arguments regarding Messenger, solidifying its status as an important gateway. Meta had argued that Messenger was heavily integrated with the broader Facebook social network and shouldn’t be judged as a standalone threat to market competition. However, the Court ruled that Messenger is a distinct, number-independent communication service offered via standalone apps, utilized independently of Facebook, and actively promoted by Meta to help businesses engage with consumers. Furthermore, the Court clarified that when the Commission calculates user thresholds to determine a service’s market power, it is not required to exclude users who happen to hold both Facebook and Messenger accounts.
Conversely, the Court handed Meta a major legal win by striking down the gatekeeper designation for Meta Marketplace. The judges determined that the European Commission committed a fundamental error in law by failing to properly evaluate the platform’s operational reality at the exact time of the designation. Specifically, the Commission relied purely on data from the three years preceding its decision, completely ignoring critical structural changes Meta had implemented in its Marketplace ecosystem at the end of July 2023.
The General Court heavily criticized the Commission’s lack of sufficient legal reasoning regarding Marketplace, branding its analysis of Meta’s structural changes as hypothetical and incomplete. Because the Commission failed to provide a concrete evaluation of how those July 2023 changes affected Marketplace’s status as an online intermediation service, the Court ruled that Meta was left unable to understand the exact reasons for its classification, and European courts were deprived of their power to properly review the case. Consequently, while Meta remains bound to strict DMA obligations for Facebook and Messenger, it has successfully decoupled Marketplace from the stringent antitrust framework, though the European Commission retains the right to appeal the decision on points of law within the next two months.
