Case C-496/23 P, Meta Platforms Ireland v Commission – how wide may a search term be?
A request for information under Regulation 1/2003 may demand “all necessary information”. Meta’s appeals ask what “necessary” means when the request is a list of search terms run across an executive’s entire mailbox.
Facts
In May 2020, in its investigations into Facebook’s data practices (AT.40628) and Facebook Marketplace (AT.40684), the Commission adopted two decisions under Article 18(3) of Regulation (EC) No 1/2003 requiring Meta to produce all documents held by named custodians, over a defined period, that matched specified search terms. Meta challenged both, arguing that the terms were so general that they were bound to return a mass of documents unconnected with the investigation, many containing sensitive personal or confidential information, and that the Commission knew this in advance. On 24 May 2023 the General Court dismissed both actions (Cases T‑451/20, ECLI:EU:T:2023:276, and T‑452/20, ECLI:EU:T:2023:277). Meta appealed both; this report concerns C‑496/23 P (the data-practices decision), and the parallel appeal in Case C‑497/23 P raises the same grounds against the Marketplace decision. On 26 February 2026 the Advocate General delivered an Opinion in both cases (ECLI:EU:C:2026:117) proposing that the Court dismiss the appeals; it exists in French only, and the account of it below is this site’s.
Grounds of Appeal
According to the Official Journal notice, the appellant raises the following grounds.
First ground of appeal is that the General Court wrongly rejected the first plea, and erred in law when it held at paragraphs 87–108 that the search terms set out in paragraphs 87 and 102 of the judgment under appeal complied with the principle of necessity contained in Articles 18(1) and (3) of Regulation No 1/2003. In particular:
— The General Court erred in law at paragraphs 92, 93–95, 99 and 103 of the judgment under appeal in finding, in essence, that the principle of necessity was satisfied merely because the Commission could reasonably suppose, regarded wholly in the abstract, that the search terms could help it to determine whether the conduct in recital 1 of the contested decision took place. The General Court failed to give any (alternatively sufficient) weight to the fact that the unduly general search terms the Commission had selected, when applied across all of the custodian’s documents over the entire period, were bound to give rise to a vast preponderance of documents that would bear no connection at all to the investigation (and many of which would contain sensitive personal or commercially confidential information), in circumstances where the Commission was aware in advance that its approach was bound to produce such results.
— The General Court erred in law at paragraph 99 of the judgment under appeal insofar as it held that documents can be considered irrelevant to the investigation ‘only after the search terms have been applied to the applicant’s databases’. In practical terms, such an approach runs the real risk of rendering the principle of necessity non-justiciable. It in effect, gives a discretion to the Commission that is without limits and renders the principle of necessity redundant. It is not a correct interpretation of the legal requirement of necessity (and proportionality) to allow an authority to apply manifestly overly broad search terms over a vast number of documents that generate a huge amount of irrelevant and confidential responsive documents. Paragraph 99 also ignored and distorted the true sense of the appellant’s evidence that the Commission was aware in advance that the mechanical application of broad search terms was bound to capture an overwhelming predominance of irrelevant documents (as proved to be the case).
— The General Court erred also in law at paragraphs 105-106 in refusing to consider the legal framework applicable to inspection decisions to be relevant to requests for information and by permitting the Commission to request documents without the safeguards or filters equivalent to those granted during inspections under Article 20 of Regulation No 1/2003.
Second ground of appeal is that the General Court erred in law and failed to give sufficient reasons at paragraph 75 of the judgment under appeal when it held that ‘an overall assessment of compliance by the Commission with the principle of necessity is not appropriate’.
Third ground of appeal is that the General Court wrongly dismissed the second plea, and erred in law at paragraphs 179–185 of the judgment under appeal in holding that the Commission could request documents that contained personal information and were also linked to the appellant’s business activities without providing any safeguards or filter for the personal information.
Sources
OJ notice C/2024/930 (EUR‑Lex) · Parallel appeal, C‑497/23 P (EUR‑Lex) · Case file on CURIA · Opinion of the Advocate General, 26 February 2026 (ECLI:EU:C:2026:117) · Judgment under appeal, T‑451/20 (ECLI:EU:T:2023:276) · Regulation (EC) No 1/2003
Comment
Article 18(1) lets the Commission require “all necessary information”, and the Court has long read “necessary” as a relationship between the information requested and the suspected infringement — the Commission need only reasonably suppose the information will help it. The General Court applied that test to each search term and found each one passed. Meta’s first and second grounds attack the method rather than the results: if necessity is assessed term by term, and a term is necessary whenever it might surface something relevant, then no combination of terms is ever unnecessary, however much irrelevant material it is certain to sweep in. The second ground makes the point in one line, quoting the General Court’s own holding that “an overall assessment of compliance by the Commission with the principle of necessity is not appropriate”. Meta says that is exactly the assessment necessity requires.
The Opinion is not encouraging for Meta. On the notice’s account of the General Court’s reasoning, and on the Advocate General’s, the Commission’s request was already limited to named custodians and to the investigation’s own period, and it could reasonably suppose at the time that what the terms returned would be useful; whether it later proved so is a matter for the review of any decision built on it, not for the request. The Advocate General proposes rejecting the grounds directed at that reasoning as inadmissible or unfounded, and dismissing both appeals in full. If the Court follows, the position will be that a request for information is judged by what the Commission could expect when it wrote it, not by the proportion of noise it produced.
The third ground, on personal information, is the part of the case with the widest audience. The custodians whose mailboxes were searched are individuals; their medical, financial and family correspondence matched the terms as readily as their business correspondence, and the General Court held that the Commission could require it all, with only a virtual data room as a filter after the event. Meta’s argument that Article 20 inspections come with safeguards that Article 18 requests lack is a real asymmetry in the Regulation — an inspector on the premises is subject to limits that a request delivered by letter is not. The Court’s answer will say whether the GDPR and Article 7 of the Charter impose a filter on the Commission’s evidence-gathering that the Regulation itself does not.