On 3 June 2026, in Case T-1078/23, Meta Platforms, Inc. v European Commission, the General Court of the European Union (the “Court”) delivered a judgment on an action for annulment brought by Meta Platforms, Inc. (“Meta”) against a decision of the European Commission (the “Commission”) adopted pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (the “DMA”).
In its ruling, the Court dismissed Meta’s action in so far as it concerned the designation of Messenger as a core platform service, but upheld it with respect to Marketplace, finding that the Commission had failed to take proper account of relevant changes made to that service before the adoption of the contested decision and had not adequately stated the reasons for its assessment.
Background to the dispute
The DMA establishes a harmonised regulatory framework for the designation and supervision of so-called “gatekeepers” in the digital sector. These are providers of core platform services (“CPS”) which, by reason of their size, reach and position within the digital economy, may act as important gateways between business users and end users. The DMA reflects the concern that, in highly digitalised markets, certain platform operators may acquire a structural position enabling them to influence the conditions under which businesses reach customers and users access digital services. It therefore sets out a series of obligations intended to prevent unfair practices and preserve the contestability of digital markets.
Under Article 3 of the DMA, an undertaking may be designated as a gatekeeper where three cumulative conditions are met: it has a significant impact on the internal market; it provides a CPS which is an important gateway for business users to reach end users; and it enjoys an entrenched and durable position in its operations, or it is foreseeable that it will enjoy such a position in the near future. These conditions are presumed to be satisfied where certain quantitative thresholds are met, including thresholds relating to turnover or market capitalisation, the provision of the CPS in at least three Member States, and the number of monthly active end users and yearly active business users in the Union.
Against this background, on 3 July 2023, Meta notified the Commission that several services provided within its digital ecosystem fell within the scope of the DMA. Meta accepted that certain services constituted CPS, but argued, in substance, that Messenger and Marketplace should not be designated as separate CPS for which Meta would be treated as a gatekeeper. In particular, Meta disputed the Commission’s assessment that those services individually constituted important gateways for business users to reach end users.
By its decision of 5 September 2023, the Commission rejected Meta’s arguments and designated Meta as a gatekeeper in respect of several CPS, including Messenger and Marketplace. The Commission considered that the relevant quantitative thresholds were met and that Meta had not put forward sufficiently substantiated arguments capable of rebutting the statutory presumptions under the DMA. Meta brought an action for annulment before the General Court, seeking partial annulment of the Commission’s decision insofar as it concerned Messenger and Marketplace.
The issues at stake
The case must be read against the broader background of the DMA, which seeks to address the structural role acquired by certain large digital platforms in the digital economy. Core platform services may benefit from strong economies of scale, network effects, data advantages, user lock-in and vertical integration. Where those services become gateways between business users and end users, their providers may acquire the ability to influence the conditions of access to markets and to weaken market contestability.
This regulatory concern is particularly relevant where the same undertaking both controls a platform infrastructure and competes, directly or indirectly, with business users depending on that infrastructure. In such circumstances, the issue is not limited to the existence of market power in the traditional competition-law sense. It also concerns the risk that the architecture of the ecosystem itself may allow the gatekeeper to preserve or extend its position, including through self-preferencing, restrictions on interoperability, limitations on access to data, or other practices capable of increasing dependency on the platform. As end-users of CPS are regularly required to provide their consent to third parties’ use of personal data, mainly for profiling purposes, the rise of the Big Tech also presents challenges for fundamental rights (as the Court had previously addressed).
The DMA was introduced as an ex-ante instrument to address those risks before they crystallise into durable market closure. It operates alongside EU and national competition rules, which remain applicable and allow competition authorities to intervene ex post in cases of anticompetitive conduct, such as abuses of dominance or anticompetitive agreements. The DMA’s logic is therefore complementary, but distinct: once an undertaking is designated as a gatekeeper in respect of a given core platform service, it becomes subject to specific obligations designed to preserve fairness and contestability.
Against that background, the issues at stake in this case were more precise, as the General Court was not required to rule on Meta’s business model as such, nor on the overall legality of data-driven advertising. The question was whether the Commission had lawfully designated Meta as a gatekeeper in respect of two specific services: Messenger and Marketplace.
This distinction was important because the obligations imposed on a gatekeeper under the DMA depend on the nature of the core platform service concerned. Messenger was assessed as a number-independent interpersonal communications service (“NIICS”), a category for which the DMA provides, in particular, interoperability-related obligations. Marketplace, by contrast, was assessed as an online intermediation service (“OIS”), a category which raises different issues concerning the relationship between the platform, business users and end users.
Recognising Messenger and Marketplace as separate core platform services therefore had significant practical consequences. It extended the scope of Meta’s DMA obligations beyond its broader social networking ecosystem and required compliance to be assessed service by service. The central question was thus whether the Commission had correctly identified those services as distinct core platform services and whether it had adequately established that they constituted important gateways for business users to reach end users.
The findings of the Court
The judgment raised several crucial questions concerning the application of the DMA designation mechanism. Regarding Messenger, the Court had to determine whether this could validly be treated as a CPS distinct from Facebook. This required assessing whether Messenger had sufficient functional autonomy, despite its integration with Meta’s broader social networking ecosystem. Furthermore, the Court had to examine whether the Commission was entitled to conclude that Messenger individually constituted an important gateway for business users to reach end users. This involved, among other things, the question whether the Commission had to exclude from Messenger’s user base those end users who were also Facebook users.
The Court first confirmed that Messenger could be regarded as a NIICS distinct from Facebook. In order to conclude this, it attached importance to several factors, including the existence of standalone Messenger applications, the possibility of using Messenger independently from Facebook and the fact that Meta promotes tools specific to Messenger, allowing businesses to interact with users. Thus the Court rejected the argument that Messenger’s integration within the broader Facebook ecosystem prevented it from being classified as a separate CPS. In substance, functional links between services do not necessarily preclude the Commission from identifying a distinct core platform service where that service has its own characteristics and use cases.
The General Court also confirmed that the Commission had not erred in finding that Messenger individually constituted an “important gateway” for business users to reach end users. In particular, the Commission was not required to count only those Messenger users who were not also users of Facebook. The overlap between user bases did not, in itself, deprive Messenger of its importance as a separate channel through which business users may reach end users.
The Court further held that the Commission was not required to open a market investigation before confirming the designation of Messenger. Meta’s arguments were not considered sufficiently substantiated to manifestly call into question the presumptions laid down by the DMA. The Court also rejected Meta’s arguments based on breach of the rights of defence.
With respect to Marketplace, the Court had to assess whether this could properly be classified as an online intermediation service. Central to this analysis was the methodology employed to identify business users on the platform. Since the applicable terms of service restricted Marketplace to consumer sellers and had removed the ability for business pages to create listings from January 2023, the Commission was unable to rely on official user categories. It instead applied a so-called “power sellers proxy”, treating users who published a high number of listings of the same kind as de facto business users. On the basis of this methodology, the Commission identified over 100,000 such users in each of the years 2020, 2021 and 2022, thereby satisfying the threshold of 10,000 yearly active business users under Article 3(2)(b) of the DMA.
The analysis was complicated, however, by the fact that prior to the adoption of the Commission's decision of 5 September 2023, the gatekeeper implemented changes to Marketplace capping the number of listings a user could publish per month to a maximum of 20 in the same category. Those changes were duly notified to the Commission, along with the submission that, under the Commission's own proxy, no business users would remain on Marketplace once they took effect. Despite having been so informed, the Commission's decision described those changes merely as "future limitations" in the process of being implemented, without conducting any specific analysis of their impact on the classification of Marketplace as an online intermediation service.
The Court held that the Commission erred in law by relying solely on data relating to the three years preceding the designation, without properly taking into account those changes. The Commission actually could not disregard relevant factual developments occurring before the adoption of the decision, especially where those developments could affect whether the service met the legal definition of an online intermediation service. The Court also found that the Commission had failed to state sufficient reasons. The decision did not contain a concrete analysis of the changes made to Marketplace, nor did it explain their effect on the finding that Marketplace enabled business users to offer goods or services to consumers. The Court considered that the reasoning relied upon by the Commission was hypothetical and incomplete.
As a result, the Court concluded that the Commission’s decision did not allow Meta to understand the reasons why Marketplace had been classified as an online intermediation service, nor did it allow the EU Courts to exercise their power of review. The decision was therefore annulled in so far as it designated Meta as a gatekeeper for Marketplace.
The way forward
The judgment is a partial setback for the Commission, but not a rejection of the designation framework under the DMA. On Messenger, the General Court’s reasoning confirms that the Commission may identify distinct core platform services within a broader digital ecosystem, even where those services are technically or commercially connected. This has consequences for gatekeepers operating integrated ecosystems, since the analysis may be conducted service by service rather than only at the level of the platform group. On Marketplace, the judgment is a useful reminder that the Commission’s designation powers are not mechanical. Even if the DMA relies on quantitative thresholds and presumptions, the Commission must fully engage with the factual developments submitted by the undertaking concerned.
At the same time, the judgment should not be overstated, as the annulment concerning Marketplace appears closely linked to the specific reasoning deficiencies identified by the Court and to the timing of the changes made by Meta before the Commission’s decision. As such, it does not prevent the Commission from adopting a new decision, provided that it substantiates its analysis adequately and takes account of the relevant facts. From this standpoint, it will be interesting to see whether the Commission appeals the judgment before the Court of Justice (limited to points of law) and, in such case, the outcome thereof.
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