BRUSSELS – A legal advisor to the European Union’s highest court delivered a blow to Meta Platforms on Thursday, recommending that judges reject the social media company’s challenge to EU antitrust investigators’ data demands.
The tech company behind Facebook had appealed to the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg, arguing that regulators made unreasonable requests for information during separate probes into Facebook’s social networking platform and its online marketplace for classified advertisements.
Advocate General Athanasios Rantos issued his advisory opinion, stating that the court should “dismiss both appeals and uphold the judgments of the General Court,” according to an official court statement. Rantos concluded in his non-binding recommendation that the lower court “did not err in law in assessing the necessity of the information requested or in examining the safeguards for its provision.”
While these advisory opinions are not legally binding, the court’s judges typically follow such guidance when making their final decisions, which are expected in the coming months.
The legal proceedings are formally known as C-496/23 P Meta Platforms Ireland v Commission (Facebook Marketplace) and C-497/23 P Meta Platforms Ireland v Commission (Facebook Data).
