by Foo Yun Chee
LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) – Meta, the parent company of Facebook, on Wednesday compared European competition authorities, which are investigating the social network’s online advertising service, to a large trawler dragging its nets on the seabed.
The Facebook owner says he has already submitted more than a million documents to the European Commission since his first request in 2019 concerning Facebook Marketplace, his social network and his online classifieds site.
The group, however, questions the necessity and proportionality of the data requests, as well as the reasons given by the European competition authorities.
Meta also criticizes the Commission’s use of 2,500 search terms – some of which consist of frequent or very common words, such as “big question”, “free” and “bad for us” – to identify the documents requested from the company.
Meta, which faces a daily fine of 8 million euros if it does not comply with the demands, then filed an appeal before the EU court, based in Luxembourg, and the bloc’s second court.
“One must consider both the vague nature of what is being investigated and the extraordinarily broad and broad research topics. Once that context is known, it is very clear, with all due respect owe you, what it’s about. This is a classic fishing trip,” Meta’s attorney, Daniel Jowell, told a five-judge panel.
“The Commission behaves like a super fishing trawler combing the seabed to see what rare fish species it will find in its vast nets,” he added.
The Commission rejected these criticisms.
“The accusation of fishing is manifestly unfounded,” European Commission lawyer Giuseppe Conte told the court, adding that the Commission was investigating seven possible anti-competitive practices and had requested documents in order to determine whether there were any. had violations.
The court is expected to rule on the case in the coming months.
(Foo Yun Chee report, French version Diana Mandiá, edited by Jean-Michel Bélot)
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