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Meta was fined nearly 800 million euros by Brussels after regulators accused Facebook’s parent company of stifling competition by “tying” its free marketplace service to the social network.
Outgoing EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said on Thursday that Facebook had “imposed unfair trading conditions” on other providers by tying its classified advertising service Meta.
Furthermore, she added: “They did it to benefit their service, Facebook Marketplace, and it gave them an advantage that[other companies]couldn’t match.” This is illegal. ”
Meta has announced that it will appeal the €797.72 million fine imposed by the regulator. “We built our marketplace in response to consumer demand. This decision ignores market realities and only serves to protect existing marketplaces from competition.”
It added: “There is no evidence that the Commission’s decision causes competitive harm to competitors or harm to consumers.”
The EU’s long-running antitrust investigation into Meta follows accusations by rivals that the tech giant is abusing its dominant position by offering free services while profiting from data collected on its platform. It was started in 2019.
In December 2022, the European Commission filed its first complaint against Facebook for allegedly using data collected for free (mainly from companies) to sell ads to users.
It also marks one of the last investigations overseen by Vestager, who is expected to leave the committee in the coming weeks after a decade of antitrust enforcement against Big Tech.
Vestager has repeatedly targeted the world’s biggest tech companies during his tenure, taking some of the toughest actions against tech giants like Apple, Google and Microsoft.
The European Commission said on Thursday that Meta is also “dominant in the personal social network market (…) and in the domestic market for online display advertising on social media.”
Launched in 2016, Facebook Marketplace is a popular platform for buying and selling second-hand goods, especially household goods such as furniture.
Meta argued that it operates in a highly competitive environment. In a post published Thursday, the tech giant said that European marketplaces “continue to grow and dominate within the EU,” and platforms such as eBay, France’s Leboncoin and the Netherlands’ Marktplaats. was pointed out as a “formidable competitor.”
Mehta’s fine was imposed at a time of political transition for both the EU and the US.
Brussels authorities have been aggressive in both rhetoric and antitrust investigations against Big Tech giants seeking to open up their markets to local startups.
In the past five years, EU regulators have also passed landmark legislation, the Digital Markets Act, aimed at slowing down dominant technology companies and boosting the local tech industry.
But some observers expect the new commission, which is set to begin a new five-year term in the coming weeks, to strike a more conciliatory tone amid concerns about retaliation from the incoming Trump administration. I am doing it.
