Meta fined €800m for breach of EU competition law

Meta Platforms has been fined nearly €800 million by the European Commission over “abusive practices” benefiting Facebook Marketplace, its online classified ads service.
The European Union regulator said Meta had breached competition rules by tying the ads business to the Facebook social network, which the commission claimed gave Facebook Marketplace an unfair advantage over rivals.
Margrethe Vestager, the commission’s executive vice-president in charge of competition policy, said Meta’s practices gave it “advantages that other online classified ads service providers could not match”. She added: “This is illegal under EU antitrust rules. Meta must now stop this behaviour.”
The commission has fined Meta €797.72 million (£663 million).
Meta said it would appeal against the decision. In the meantime, it said it would comply and would work quickly and constructively to launch a solution that addresses the points raised.
The technology giant, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp and is led by Mark Zuckerberg, said that the ruling fails to prove any “competitive harm” to rivals or consumers and “ignores the realities of the thriving European market for online classified listing services”.
It said the decision also ignores the fact that Facebook users can choose whether to “engage with Marketplace, and many don’t”.
• Frames, friends and frights: my foray into Facebook Marketplace
Online marketplaces such as eBay and Vinted, the platform for second-hand clothes, are continuing to grow.
Facebook launched Marketplace in 2016 and expanded into several European countries a year later. The EU opened formal proceedings into possible anticompetitive conduct of Facebook in June 2021. Companies risk fines of up to as much as 10 per cent of their global turnover for EU antitrust violations.
Meta shares slipped $3.03, or 0.5 per cent, to $576.97 in pre-market trading in New York.