800 million euros! EU Commission imposes gigantic fine on Meta

Brussels - The EU Commission imposes a fine of almost 800 million euros onFacebook parent company Meta!

Jens Büttner/dpa
The EU Commission fines Meta for gaining a competitive advantage. (symbolic image)

According to the EU Commission, the Facebook group Meta has violated competition law and must therefore pay a fine.

The reason for the accusation is that Meta has linked its online classifieds service "Facebook Marketplace" with the social network Facebook.

According to the Commission, this imposed unfair trading conditions on other providers of classified ad services, as Meta thus gave its own service a competitive advantage that its competitors were unable to offset.

This violates European antitrust regulations and leads to a fine.

Meta reacted immediately and announced that it would appeal the decision.

Not the first high fine for American technology platforms

According to the EU Commission, the imposed fine of 797.72 million euros took into account how long and to what extent Meta had violated EU law. The revenue from Facebook Marketplace was also included in the calculation of the fine.

In March of this year, the EU Commission had already imposed a competition fine of 1.8 billion euros on Apple. The tech giant was accused of abusing its dominant market position for the distribution of music streaming apps via the App Store on iPhones and iPads.

Google has also already been fined billions of euros for violating EU competition rules in several cases.