Meta Accuses EU of “Aberrant” Overreach in Long-Running Antitrust Data Battle

Meta Platforms on Wednesday sharply criticised what it described as “aberrant” and excessively intrusive demands for information issued by EU antitrust regulators during two investigations launched four years ago, marking a new peak in corporate resistance to what many companies argue are disproportionate regulatory powers.

The company — which had earlier compared the European Commission’s data-gathering approach in the Facebook social network and online classified ads probes to a “fishing trawler” — said the central question now before the courts is whether any boundaries exist on the Commission’s authority to compel documents, and whether effective judicial oversight is in place.

After failing to persuade judges at the EU’s lower tribunal, Meta has brought the fight to the EU Court of Justice, the bloc’s highest court.

Before a five-judge panel, Meta’s lawyer Daniel Jowell detailed the nature of the documents collected under the Commission’s orders, saying they captured “autopsy reports on family members, children’s school reports, information about individuals and their families, and even security details.”

“These sorts of aberrant, intrusive and disproportionate requests should, in our respectful submission, never have been made,” he told the court.

Jowell argued that the core issue is whether the Commission’s power to demand digital records “is effectively unlimited, or whether it is guided in a way that properly respects the principles of necessity, proportionality and the fundamental right to privacy.”

According to Meta, the Commission’s approach relied on approximately 2,500 search terms in the Facebook data case and around 600 in the Marketplace probe, forcing the company to hand over nearly one million documents.

Giuseppe Conte, representing the Commission, rejected that characterisation, insisting that the regulator had largely followed Meta’s own proposed methodology. “A large part of the search terms of the contested decisions are the same as those that Meta itself selected on its own initial initiative to prepare its response to the March 2019 decision,” he said.

Conte added that “it is common practice for the Commission and indeed all competition authorities around the world to request the company being investigated to produce documents responsive to search terms.” He also disputed Meta’s counts, saying the terms involved numbered in the hundreds, not thousands.

A ruling from the Court of Justice is expected next year.

The dispute unfolds in the shadow of a major penalty: in 2023, the EU competition authority imposed a €797.7 million ($923.6 million) fine on Meta for tying its Facebook Marketplace classified ads service to its main Facebook platform and for setting unfair trading conditions for rival classified-ads providers.

The cases are formally listed as Meta Platforms Ireland v Commission (Facebook Marketplace) C-496/23 P and Meta Platforms Ireland v Commission (Facebook Data) C-497/23 P.

By fLEXI tEAM