EU General Court annuls gatekeeper designation for Facebook Marketplace but upholds Messenger

The European Union’s General Court handed Meta Platforms a narrow win Wednesday in its challenge to the European Commission’s 2023 Digital Markets Act designations, striking down the company’s gatekeeper label for Facebook Marketplace while leaving its Messenger designation intact.

In a judgment in Case T-1078/23, Meta Platforms v Commission, the Luxembourg-based court said it “annuls the decision designating Meta as a gatekeeper as regards Marketplace.” But, the court added, “it maintains Meta’s designation for its interpersonal communications service Messenger.”

The ruling turned on how the Commission assessed Marketplace before adopting its Sept. 5, 2023 designation decision. In plain terms, the court found that the Commission did not properly deal with changes Meta made to Marketplace on July 31, 2023, shortly before the decision was issued.

According to the court’s press release, the Commission made an error of law by relying only on data from the three years before the designation without considering those late changes. The court also found the Commission’s reasoning was inadequate because it did not concretely analyze the July 2023 changes or explain how they affected whether Marketplace qualified as an online intermediation service — a type of platform that connects businesses and users.

The factual point was central. The court said Meta’s July 31, 2023 changes limited the number of listings a user could publish, and that those changes caused the disappearance of the criterion the Commission had used to identify business users on Marketplace. EU acts, the court said, must be judged on the facts and law as they stood when the act was adopted — here, Sept. 5, 2023.

By contrast, the court upheld the Commission’s conclusion that Messenger met the standard for designation under the EU’s Digital Markets Act, the bloc’s tech competition law. In the court’s view, Messenger remained an important gateway between business users and end users, so that part of Meta’s challenge failed.

The immediate practical effect on Marketplace is limited. The Commission had already removed Facebook Marketplace from DMA supervision on April 23, 2025, after reviewing Meta’s request and finding the service had fewer than 10,000 yearly active business users in 2024. That means Wednesday’s judgment matters more as a legal rebuke of the Commission’s original reasoning than as a disruption to the current oversight of Marketplace.

The court also noted a broader procedural point: “The institution concerned must fill any legal vacuum created by the annulment of the act.” No verified same-day reaction from Meta or the Commission was available.

The Digital Markets Act, formally Regulation (EU) 2022/1925, is the EU law adopted in 2022 to curb the market power of the largest digital platforms. Under the regime, the Commission can designate companies as gatekeepers if they meet size thresholds and if a service reaches at least 45 million monthly active end users and 10,000 yearly active business users in the EU. Gatekeeper status triggers a set of obligations meant to prevent dominant platforms from unfairly locking in users and businesses.

In the Commission’s first major DMA designation round in September 2023, Meta was designated for several services, including Facebook, Instagram, Meta Ads, WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook Marketplace. This case covered Meta’s challenge to the Messenger and Marketplace parts of that decision.

An appeal on points of law may be brought before the Court of Justice of the European Union within two months and 10 days of notification.