EU court rules in favor of Meta and TikTok on supervisory fees: Report

Meta Platforms and TikTok have won a legal case against the way European Union regulators calculated a supervisory fee charged under the Digital Services Act (DSA). According to a report by news agency Reuters, the companies will not get any refunds for now, but the court has given the European Commission 12 months to fix the calculation method.

The cases were registered as T-55/24 - Meta Platforms Ireland v Commission and T-58/24 - TikTok Technology v Commission.The DSA, in force since November 2022, requires large online platforms to take stronger action against illegal and harmful content or risk fines of up to 6% of their annual global revenue. Along with Meta and TikTok, other companies paying supervisory fees include Amazon, Apple, Booking.com, Google, Microsoft, X (formerly Twitter), Snapchat and Pinterest.

What the court said

The Luxembourg-based General Court said that the EU’s methodology for calculating the fee should have been adopted under a delegated act, not through implementing decisions. Judges ruled that the European Commission must reformulate the process within a year but does not have to repay the 2023 fees already collected.Meta and TikTok, owned by ByteDance, were charged 0.05% of their annual worldwide net income to cover the EU’s monitoring costs.

They argued the system was unfair and led to disproportionate fees, as companies reporting losses did not have to pay even if they had a large user base.

How European Commission and companies respond

The European Commission said the ruling confirms the fee principle is valid and only requires a “formal correction” in procedure. “We now have 12 months to adopt a delegated act to formalise the fee calculation,” a spokesperson said.TikTok welcomed the decision, saying it would follow the development of the new rules closely. Meta also supported the judgment, calling for flaws in the methodology to be corrected.