Meta to face first EU antitrust fine for EU Marketplace and Facebook merger and ET BrandEquity

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Meta Platforms is set to face its first EU antitrust fine in the next few weeks for linking its classifieds site Marketplace to its social networking site Facebook, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The European Commission’s decision comes more than a year and a half after it accused the US tech giant of giving its classified ads service Facebook Marketplace an unfair advantage by bundling its two services.

The European competition watchdog also found that Meta was abusing its dominant position by unilaterally imposing unfair commercial terms on rival classifieds services that advertise on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta could be fined up to $13.4 billion (or 10% of its 2023 global revenue), although EU sanctions are typically much lower than that.

The Commission is likely to issue a decision in September or October, before Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s antitrust commissioner, steps down in November. However, the sources said, that deadline could be extended.

The commission declined to comment.

Meta repeated comments posted earlier.

“The European Commission’s claims are without merit. We continue to work constructively with regulators to demonstrate that our product innovation is pro-consumer and pro-competitive,” Meta spokesman Matt Pollard said.

The company last year tried to end the EU investigation by restricting its use of rivals’ advertising data on Facebook Marketplace, but that concession was rejected by the EU’s enforcer, other sources told Reuters. The U.K.’s competition regulator accepted a similar offer.

In a separate allegation brought by the Commission this month against Meta, it failed to comply with groundbreaking technology rules because of its payment- or consent-based advertising model introduced in November.