The DMA Meets the Rule of Law
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act was built to move fast: designate gatekeepers, impose obligations, and reshape digital markets before the lawyers can finish sharpening their pencils. But in Meta Platforms Ireland v. Commission, the General Court offered a useful reminder: even Europe’s new digital rulebook still has to pass through an old-fashioned door marked “legal reasoning.”
The court’s partial annulment of the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act designation of Meta—limited to Facebook Marketplace—is not a revolution. It did not invalidate the DMA. It did not reject the Commission’s authority to designate large digital platforms as gatekeepers. It did not save Meta’s Messenger service—a standalone instant-messaging platform that lets users send texts, share high-definition photos and large files, and make voice or video calls without needing a phone number—from the DMA’s reach.
Formally, the decision is narrow. The court upheld the Messenger designation, while annulling the designation of Facebook Marketplace—a digital classifieds platform embedded in the Facebook app and website—because the Commission had not adequately justified its analysis.
Precisely because the judgment is narrow, it may prove significant. It suggests how European Union courts can discipline regulatory overreach without openly repudiating the political choices embodied in modern EU digital regulation.