In a landmark decision on September 10, 2025, the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg ruled in favour of Meta Platforms (Facebook, Instagram) and TikTok, saying that the European Commission used the wrong legal procedure to set how they calculate supervisory fees under the Digital Services Act (DSA).
What’s the Case About
- Under the DSA, “very large online platforms” (like Meta and TikTok) must pay a supervisory fee set at 0.05% of their global net income. This fee helps cover the EU’s costs of monitoring whether these platforms comply with regulations meant to reduce illegal content, protect user rights, and make platforms more accountable.
- Until now, the fee was calculated via implementation decisions based on a method that combined user numbers with profit/loss metrics. Meta and TikTok argued this was procedurally incorrect, unfair, and opaque.
What the Court Ruled
- The General Court agreed that the methodology used to set the fee should have been enacted through a delegated act rather than via implementation decisions. This is more than a technicality it changes how regulators must lawfully set and communicate these fees.
- Importantly, the Court did not order repayment of the fees that Meta and TikTok already paid for 2023.
- However, regulators now have 12 months to revise the fee methodology using the correct legal framework (i.e. via delegated acts) so future fees are calculated properly.
Implications & What’s Next
- For Meta and TikTok, this is a win in terms of legal process, transparency, and fairness — while they may still pay fees for the current period, future calculations must follow the stricter procedural standards.
- For the EU, this decision underscores the importance of adhering strictly to the legal structures laid out in the DSA. It illustrates that even well-intentioned regulations can be challenged on procedural grounds.
- Other large tech firms subject to the same supervisory fee — Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Snap, Pinterest, Booking.com, X (formerly Twitter) — will be watching closely. They may challenge their fees or seek clarity on how the revised methodology will apply.
This ruling is a reminder: in tech regulation (especially at the scale of the EU), how a rule is made is just as important as what the rule says. As the 12-month window for change begins, transparency and legal precision will be especially under the spotlight.
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