Case C-909/26 P, Meta Platforms v Commission – is Messenger its own gateway?
The Digital Markets Act regulates services, not companies, and so everything depends on where one service ends and the next begins. Meta says Messenger is part of Facebook. The Commission and the General Court said it is a service of its own.
Facts
By Decision C(2023) 6105 of 5 September 2023 the Commission designated Meta a gatekeeper under Article 3 of Regulation (EU) 2022/1925. Article 2 of the decision listed the core platform services found to be important gateways for business users to reach end users, including “(e) Meta’s [number-independent interpersonal communications service] Messenger” and “(f) Meta’s [online intermediation service] Marketplace”. Meta had notified Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Marketplace and other products as a single online social networking service. The Commission instead found that Messenger was a distinct service — a number-independent interpersonal communications service within Article 2(2)(e) of the DMA — on the basis, among other things, that Meta had developed standalone applications for it, through which most users accessed it. On 3 June 2026 the General Court (Eighth Chamber, extended composition) annulled Article 2(f), on Marketplace, for inadequate reasoning, and dismissed the action as to the remainder (Case T‑1078/23, ECLI:EU:T:2026:357). Meta appeals only the part concerning Messenger.
Grounds of Appeal
According to the Official Journal notice, Meta asks the Court to set aside point 2 of the operative part in so far as it dismisses the action against Article 2(e), to annul that provision or refer the case back, and to order the Commission to pay the costs.
In support of the appeal, the appellant relies on one ground of appeal, alleging that the judgment under appeal is vitiated by errors of law and inadequate reasoning in relation to the classification of Facebook Messenger as a standalone number-independent interpersonal communications service core platform service under Regulation (EU) 2022/1925.
Sources
OJ notice C/2026/5061 (EUR‑Lex) · Case file on CURIA · Judgment under appeal, T‑1078/23 (ECLI:EU:T:2026:357) · Regulation (EU) 2022/1925
Comment
The appeal is short and its target is precise. Before the General Court, Meta’s first plea was built in four limbs: that Messenger was in substance “the chat functionality of the Facebook online social networking CPS, being an integral part of that CPS”; that the Commission misread the DMA in treating it as standalone; that it wrongly refused to accept Meta’s rebuttal arguments under Article 3(5) without a market investigation; and that it relied on evidence first introduced in the decision. The General Court rejected each. The single ground of appeal takes up the core of the first two — the classification itself — and leaves the procedural complaints behind.
Why does it matter whether Messenger is one service or part of another? Because the DMA’s obligations attach service by service. Article 7 requires a gatekeeper whose number-independent interpersonal communications services are listed in the designation decision to make “the basic functionalities” of those services “interoperable with the number-independent interpersonal communications services of another provider”, on request and free of charge. A chat function folded into a social network carries no such obligation. Meta’s argument is therefore not cosmetic: if Messenger is Facebook’s chat window, it falls outside the interoperability regime; if it is a messaging service in its own right, it stays inside.
The Commission’s reasoning, accepted below, was empirical: Meta built Messenger as separate apps, most users reach it through those apps rather than through Facebook, and the overlap between the two user bases reflects Meta’s choice to use the Facebook ID as Messenger’s login, not functional integration. The General Court also noted that Meta’s own financial reporting lists Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp as four distinct services in its “Family of App Products” — a description that sits awkwardly with the argument that one of them is a feature of another. The difficulty for Meta on appeal is that this is largely a matter of fact, and the Court of Justice does not re-assess facts; Meta must show that the General Court applied the wrong legal test for when a product is a “service” under the DMA. The comparison with the Marketplace half of the judgment is instructive. There Meta won, but on reasoning — the Commission had not adequately explained how it took account of changes to Marketplace’s terms for business users — not on the principle. The Messenger appeal is the first time the Court of Justice will be asked to say how a gatekeeper’s product portfolio is to be divided into services at all, and it comes after ByteDance (C‑627/24 P), which concerns whether the designation presumptions can be rebutted. Between them the two appeals will fix the two variables on which every DMA designation depends: what a service is, and when its size makes it a gateway.