Meta receives severe penalties in Europe
While being a specialist journalist for the past twenty years, I have to let you know that the technology company Meta is facing the risk of being fined by the European Commission. The Financial Times says that the Commission is working on its conclusions regarding the offense claimed against Meta which, it is alleged, tied its Marketplace to Facebook to eliminate any competitors.
It also has issued a fine that may be expensive.
In case Meta is brought to trial and is convicted, it could be penalized to the tune of 10% of its annual revenue around the world. To put this in dollar terms, you should be aware that this amount was slightly below $135 billion in the year gone by. However, it should be pointed out that this fine could be reviewed, and the amount of it decreased; as for Meta, it is most likely that it will appeal this decision as well.
A long-term investigation
One must not lose sight of the fact that the European Commission first began its investigation back in 2019. Some three years later, it made its tentative findings. Speaking on this matter, the Executive Vice President in charge of competition policy stated that, “Meta is bundling its main social network, Facebook, with its classified ads platform, Facebook Marketplace”. Alleged inadequacies of the processing activities are also stated: the Commission fears that Meta has applied unfair commercial practices by which it has gained the rights to utilize data from other online classified ad services. Should this be true, then what Meta is doing is strictly prohibited by the European competition laws.
A change at top of the European Commission
Last but not the least it is quite relevant to observe that this case is emerging at a time of change for the European Commission. Indeed, less than ten days ago, President Ursula von der Leyen has just disclosed the list of members of her new college. At present, competition policy is in the hands of Margrethe Vestager, who has been leading this issue for 10 years, and her new ‘companion’ will be Teresa Ribera. Speculations on Vestagers’ exit started happening as early as in August last year.