Meta Platforms on Wednesday hit out at EU antitrust regulators for what it said were “aberrant” requests for information during two investigations four years ago, underscoring the increasing pushback by companies against what they see as disproportionate regulatory demands.
Meta, which had previously likened such EU demands related to its Facebook social network and online classified ads to a fishing trawler, said the issue was whether there is a limit to regulators’ power and if there was an effective judicial check on them.
The U.S. tech giant had challenged the European Commission’s requests at a lower tribunal but failed to win over judges, prompting it to appeal to the EU Court of Justice, Europe’s highest.
The documents captured by the EU demands included autopsy reports on family members, children’s school reports, information about individuals and their families, and even security details, Meta’s lawyer Daniel Jowell told the panel of five judges.
“These sorts of aberrant, intrusive and disproportionate requests should, in our respectful submission, never have been made,” he said.
Jowell said the fundamental issue at stake is whether the reach of the Commission’s power to demand digital documents “is effectively unlimited, or whether it is guided in a way that properly respects the principles of necessity, proportionality and the fundamental right to privacy”.
Meta said the Commission used around 2,500 search terms in the data case and around 600 search terms in the marketplace case, forcing it to produce almost 1 million documents.
Commission lawyer Giuseppe Conte dismissed Meta’s arguments, saying the EU competition enforcer had largely followed the company’s approach in defining search terms.
“A large part of the search terms of the contested decisions are the same as those that Meta itself selected on its own initial initiative to prepare its response to the March 2019 decision,” he said.
“It is common practice for the Commission and indeed all competition authorities around the world to request the company being investigated to produce documents responsive to search terms,” Conte said.
He also contested the vast number of search terms alleged by Meta, saying they numbered hundreds rather than thousands.
The Court is expected to rule next year.
The EU competition enforcer slapped a 797.7 million euro ($923.6 million) fine on Meta last year for tying its online classified ads service Facebook Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook and imposing unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads service providers.
