Meta fined nearly €800mn for breaking EU law over classified ads practices

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Meta has been fined nearly €800mn by Brussels after regulators accused Facebook’s parent company of stifling competition by “tying” its free Marketplace services with the social network.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s outgoing competition chief, said on Thursday that by linking Facebook with its classified ads service Meta had “imposed unfair trading conditions” on other providers.

She added: “It did so to benefit its own service Facebook Marketplace, thereby giving it advantages that [others] could not match. This is illegal.”

Meta said it would appeal against the €797.72mn fine levied by regulators. “We built Marketplace in response to consumer demand — this decision ignores the market realities, and will only serve to protect incumbent marketplaces from competition.”

It added: “The European Commission’s decision provides no evidence of competitive harm to rivals or any harm to consumers.”

The EU’s long-running antitrust probe into Meta was launched in 2019 following accusations from rivals that the tech giant was abusing its dominant position by offering free services while profiting from data it collects on the platform.

In December 2022, the European Commission issued initial charges against Facebook for allegedly using the data it gathered for free — mostly from businesses — to then sell ads to users.

It also marks one of the final investigations overseen by Vestager, who is set to leave the commission in the next few weeks after a decade of antitrust enforcement against Big Tech.

During her tenure, Vestager has repeatedly targeted the world’s biggest tech companies, with some of the toughest actions against tech giants such as Apple, Google and Microsoft.

The EU Commission on Thursday said Meta is “dominant in the market for personal social networks (…) as well as in the national markets for online display advertising on social media”.

Facebook Marketplace, launched in 2016, is a popular platform to buy and sell second-hand goods, especially household items such as furniture.

Meta has argued that it operates in a highly competitive environment. In a post published on Thursday, the tech giant said marketplaces in Europe continue “to grow and dominate in the EU”, pointing to platforms such as eBay, Leboncoin in France, and Marktplaats in the Netherlands, as “formidable competitors”.

Meta’s fine comes at a period of political transition both in the EU and the US.

Brussels officials have been aggressive both in their rhetoric and their antitrust probes against Big Tech giants as they sought to open markets for local start-ups.

In the past five years, EU regulators have also passed a landmark piece of legislation — the Digital Markets Act — with the aim to slow down dominant tech players and boost the local tech industry. 

However, some observers expect the new commission, which is set to start a new 5-year term in weeks, to strike a more conciliatory tone over fears of retaliation from the incoming Trump administration.