The EU’s General Court has upheld the European Commission’s decision to designate Meta’s Messenger service as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act, but annulled the same designation for Facebook Marketplace, giving both Brussels and Meta a partial victory in one of the early legal tests of the EU’s digital rulebook.
The judgment in Meta Platforms v Commission confirms that Messenger can be treated as a separate core platform service and an important gateway between businesses and users. At the same time, the Court found that the Commission had not sufficiently justified its decision to classify Marketplace as an online intermediation service under the DMA.
The case matters because the Digital Markets Act is one of the EU’s central tools for regulating large technology platforms. It imposes obligations on companies designated as gatekeepers, including limits on self-preferencing, rules on data use, interoperability requirements and restrictions on practices that can keep users or business customers locked into dominant ecosystems. Meta, along with other large technology companies, has challenged parts of the Commission’s approach to designation and compliance.
The Commission designated Meta as a gatekeeper in September 2023, finding that several of its services met the quantitative thresholds set out in the DMA. Those services included Facebook as an online social network, Messenger as an interpersonal communications service and Marketplace as an online intermediation service. Meta challenged the designation of Messenger and Marketplace, arguing that the Commission had wrongly treated them as separate gateways.
On Messenger, the Court sided with the Commission. It found that the service is distinct from Facebook, can be used independently, is offered through standalone applications and includes tools that allow businesses to engage with users. The Court also rejected Meta’s argument that the Commission should have counted only Messenger users who were not also Facebook users when assessing whether the service met the relevant DMA threshold.
That part of the ruling strengthens the Commission’s hand. It confirms that integration into a broader platform ecosystem does not necessarily prevent an individual service from being treated as a separate core platform service. For Brussels, this is important because large technology groups often operate interconnected products, and gatekeeper enforcement could be weakened if companies were able to avoid designation by presenting services as inseparable from a wider ecosystem.
The Court also found that the Commission was not required to open a market investigation before designating Messenger, because Meta had not presented sufficiently substantiated arguments to call the DMA presumptions into question. That finding supports the Commission’s ability to use the DMA’s threshold-based mechanism without being forced into a full market inquiry every time a major platform disputes designation.
The ruling on Marketplace was different. The Court held that the Commission had erred in law by relying only on data from the three years preceding designation and failing to take proper account of changes Meta made to Marketplace at the end of July 2023. Those changes limited the number of listings that could be published by each user and removed the criterion the Commission had used to identify business users.
The Court also found that the Commission’s reasoning was insufficient. It said the decision did not provide a concrete analysis of those changes or explain how they affected the finding that Marketplace allowed business users to offer goods and services to consumers. In practical terms, the Court accepted that the Commission’s conclusion on Marketplace was not adequately reasoned at the point when the designation was adopted.
This is the main weakness exposed by the judgment. The DMA gives the Commission a faster and more formalised route to regulating major platforms, but the Court has made clear that speed does not remove the need for clear legal reasoning. Where a designation depends on how a service functions and who uses it, the Commission must show that it has considered relevant factual changes before imposing gatekeeper obligations.
The outcome does not amount to a general defeat for the DMA. Messenger remains covered, and the Court accepted important parts of the Commission’s methodology. But it does show that the EU’s digital enforcement regime will be tested not only by political pressure from large technology companies, but also by the quality of the Commission’s evidence, reasoning and administrative record.
For Meta, the ruling offers a limited procedural and legal win. Marketplace is no longer covered by the contested designation, but the company did not succeed in removing Messenger from the gatekeeper regime. The case may also have a broader value for other platforms challenging DMA designations, because it identifies a route through which companies can attack Commission decisions: not by rejecting the DMA as such, but by arguing that the reasoning behind a particular designation is incomplete.
For Brussels, the judgment is a warning rather than a reversal. The Commission retains the central architecture of the DMA and its authority to designate large platforms as gatekeepers. However, it must now ensure that future decisions are more robust when services have changed before designation or when business-user activity is difficult to define.
The ruling comes as the EU’s digital enforcement agenda is under close scrutiny. The Commission has already used the DMA to impose compliance obligations on major platforms, while legal challenges from technology companies are moving through the EU courts. A separate challenge by TikTok over its gatekeeper designation is pending before Europe’s top court, and other designation disputes could further shape how the legislation is applied.
The significance of the Meta ruling is therefore not that one side won outright. It is that the Court has drawn a line between a strong threshold-based enforcement system and the Commission’s duty to explain its decisions properly. For the DMA to remain credible, Brussels will need both: the ability to act quickly against entrenched digital platforms and the discipline to defend each designation with precise reasoning.
