EU Court rules in favour of TikTok and Meta: Commission erred in applying Digital Services Act

Brussels – Digital services: Meta and TikTok win and corner the European Commission in the lawsuit raised by the EU executive for alleged violations of European regulations. According to the Court of Justice of the EU, the Commission misapplied the rules of the Digital Service Act (DSA) insofar as the methodology used to determine the amount of the supervision fee charged to the two web operators is not specified in the regulation, according to the Court. “It should have been adopted, not in implementing decisions, but in a delegated act, in accordance with the rules laid down in the DSA,” the Luxembourg judges held in the ruling.

According to the European regulation, the Commission has a supervisory task on platforms that are “very large, as they exceed a significant minimum threshold of users in the European Union.” The control, however, is not to be paid for by the taxpayers but by the IT giants themselves. In 2024, for instance, the European Union collected €58 million from the world’s big tech in supervision credits. Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd and TikTok Technology Ltd have, however, jointly sued the Commission, challenging its method of counting the fee.

The critical point is how the European Commission assessed the number of monthly active users for each service: a decisive element in considering who should and who should not pay the contribution. The EU executive used third-party services to verify this criterion, but this method was not included in the regulation. For the two companies, the operating method used cannot be decided arbitrarily by the Commission, and the Court of Justice confirms this.

The application was thus partly granted. The Court gave the Commission 12 months to review its operating methods. In any case, the ruling states, the “effects of the law will be provisionally maintained.” In essence, the money already paid by TikTok and Meta will not be returned.

Meta, via a statement, claims “this ruling will force the European Commission to re-evaluate the unfair methodology used to calculate these DSA tariffs.” TikTok spokesperson Paolo Ganino added: “We appreciate the Court’s decision and await developments.”

Neither side seems to have lost, however. The European institutions exult: “The Court confirms that our methodology is sound: no miscalculation, no suspension of any payment, no problems with the principle of compensation nor with the amount,” said Thomas Regnier, a Commission spokesman.