Brussels – The Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has confirmed the legitimacy of two decisions by the European Commission requiring Meta Platforms (the US multinational that controls the world’s leading social networks and messaging services) to provide access to a series of internal documents as part of an investigation into abuse of a dominant position. The legal dispute dates back to 2020, when Meta challenged the Commission’s measures on the grounds that the requested electronic files contained not only legitimately accessible company information but also a large amount of personal data.
Although the Commission had agreed to the use of a virtual data room (a secure digital room with specific “entry” rules) to ensure controlled access to certain sensitive data, the US giant had nevertheless decided to appeal to the Court of Justice of the European Union. With two judgments of 24 May 2023, the General Court of the CJEU rejected the appeals, ruling that “the requests for information were sufficiently reasoned, necessary and
proportionate, and that they complied with the right to privacy and the principle of good administration.”
At that point, Meta appealed the two rulings before the CJEU, opening a new legal dispute in which Advocate General Athanasios Rantos presented his preliminary conclusions today. In his opinion – which, as such, is purely advisory and in no way binding on the Court’s final decision – Rantos fully defended the judgments handed down by the General Court, proposing “that the Court of Justice dismiss both appeals and
uphold the judgments of the General Court.”
According to the Greek lawyer, based on European competition law, “the Commission has
broad powers of investigation which enable it to request all necessary information in order to carry out its tasks” and has no obligation to “demonstrate the individual relevance of each document requested.” The Brussels executive only has a duty to “the subject matter of its investigation and the suspected
infringement it intends to investigate,” which, in this case, was properly carried out. Finally, the Advocate General also rejected Meta’s objection that the significant volume of documents requested was clear evidence of the disproportionate nature of the Commission’s access request. Rantos also explained that “the examination of necessity and proportionality cannot be based on purely quantitative criteria, that
the Commission has a margin of discretion in its choice of investigation techniques and that the procedural safeguards
surrounding requests for information, which are distinct from those applicable to inspections, were sufficient.”
On the basis of all this, Rantos concluded that “the Court did not err in law in acknowledging that the Commission could request mixed documents, that is to say documents containing both personal data and other information,” without the need to resort to the virtual data room procedure, “as that processing is inherent to its public interest tasks in competition matters.”
The ball is now in the court of the judges of the Court, who may decide whether to follow the recommendations of the Advocate General, as they do in the vast majority of cases.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
