Monitoring References to the Court of Justice of the European Union
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12 case reports
In June the General Court annulled Meta's gatekeeper designation for Marketplace but upheld it for Messenger. Meta now appeals the half it lost, on a single ground: that Messenger is the chat function of Facebook, not a separate number-independent communications service. The answer decides how the Digital Markets Act carves a company's products into services.
Italy's communications regulator decided that Amazon's logistics, locker and transport-organising arms are postal service providers needing authorisation under the Postal Services Directive. Three Amazon companies say they never clear, sort, transport or deliver anything. The Advocate General has proposed that organising and controlling those who do is enough.
In its Facebook investigations the Commission demanded every document held by named executives that matched broad search terms, over years, whatever it contained. The General Court found that 'necessary'. Meta's two appeals ask whether necessity is tested term by term or in the round, and what protects the personal information swept up. The Advocate General has proposed dismissing both.
Investigating the Vivendi/Lagardère merger, the Commission ordered Lagardère to collect its employees' personal phones and messages and hand over what matched. The General Court upheld the order in June. The appeal raises the protection of journalistic sources, private life, and the question of who may be made to conduct the search.
Intel's €1.06 billion fine of 2009 was annulled in 2022 on the rebates; what survived were the 'naked restrictions' — payments to HP, Acer and Lenovo to delay or drop AMD-based products. The Commission re-fined those at €376 million in 2023, the General Court cut it to €237 million in December 2025, and Intel now appeals what is left.
The Digital Services Act lets the Commission bill very large platforms for the cost of supervising them, using a methodology it must lay down by delegated act. When it set Meta's and TikTok's fees it counted their users its own way, explained in an annex. The General Court annulled both decisions. The Commission appeals, saying an explanation is not a methodology.
Zalando told the Commission that 83 million people visit its store each month but that only 37% of what they see comes from third-party sellers — so only 31 million are 'recipients' of a platform. The Commission counted all of them. The General Court agreed. Zalando's appeal asks whether exposure to third-party content must be proved or may be presumed.
Amazon was designated a very large online platform under the Digital Services Act and lost its challenge in November 2025. It now tells the Court that a marketplace carries none of the 'systemic risks' the Act was written for, and that treating it like a social network breaches the Charter. The Commission has cross-appealed, saying the General Court should never have looked.
The Commission fined Qualcomm €242 million for selling baseband chipsets to Huawei and ZTE below cost to squeeze out Icera. The General Court trimmed the fine and upheld the rest. Qualcomm's seven-plea appeal is the Court's first chance in over a decade to say how predatory pricing is proved — and whether effects must be shown.
TikTok met every numerical threshold in the Digital Markets Act and was designated a gatekeeper in the Act's first wave. ByteDance says the presumptions can be rebutted and that the General Court made them impossible to rebut. The first DMA appeal to reach the Court of Justice will say how much a designated company may argue.
After a dawn raid at Red Bull's premises, the Commission carried on examining the copied data in Brussels for seven weeks. Nexans says it must then reimburse the 'additional costs' that continuation causes. The Commission paid the travel and hotels but not the lawyers; the General Court agreed. Red Bull appeals on what 'additional' means.
The Luxembourg General Court gave Google a pass in September 2024, knocking out the Commission’s whopping €1.49 bn fine; honestly, many of us in the tech risk sector expected a quick confirmation of the penalty, making this annulment a massive … Continue reading →