Meta wins court battle over marketplace 'gatekeeper' tag, Messenger challenge fails
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Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) scored a partial victory in its legal battle against sweeping European Union digital regulations on Wednesday, as Europe's second-highest court overturned an antitrust label applied to its Marketplace platform while upholding the same restrictions for its Messenger app.
The Luxembourg-based General Court ruled in case T-1078/23 (Meta Platforms v. Commission) that the European Commission failed to provide sufficient justification when it classified Facebook Marketplace as a "gatekeeper" service under the landmark Digital Markets Act (DMA).
"The decision does not satisfy the requirements in terms of reasoning as regards Marketplace, in that it allows neither Meta to understand the reasons for its classification as a core platform service that is an online intermediation service nor the Courts of the European Union to exercise their power of review."
— The EU General Court
However, the tribunal rejected Meta's separate challenge regarding its instant messaging application, Messenger.
The court's decision leaves Messenger subject to the stringent obligations of the DMA, which requires core platform services to ensure interoperability with competing platforms, avoid favoring their own tools, and obtain explicit user consent before combining personal tracking data across separate applications.
Meta had appealed to the EU tribunal after the European Commission designated both services in September 2023 as critical digital gateways for businesses to reach consumers.
Under the DMA framework, tech companies meeting specific quantitative thresholds—including market capitalization, global revenues, and active regional user bases—are presumed to hold dominant gatekeeper status unless they can successfully rebut the findings.
The split verdict provides a regulatory reprieve for Meta's classified advertisements division, potentially alleviating compliance burdens that would have required structural shifts in how Marketplace integrates with the core Facebook social network.
The European Commission can appeal the General Court's legal interpretations to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the bloc's highest legal authority, within two months and ten days of the judgment.
