Court suspends Meta and TikTok oversight fees under EU rules
Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok have challenged the supervisory fees provided for in the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) in court. The Court has determined that these social media giants do not have to pay these fees for the time being.
The DSA, which came into force in 2023, requires large online platforms to financially contribute to the oversight costs associated with their operations. The European Commission calculates these fees based on the number of users on each platform and sets a maximum of 0.05% of the provider’s global profit from the previous year.
After classifying Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok as ‘very large online platforms’ because they have more than 45 million monthly users, the EU executive set the supervisory fees for each platform in 2023. However, the court has annulled these decisions, while allowing their effects to continue temporarily.
The Court’s reasoning focused on the method the Commission used to calculate the average number of monthly active users. Since this method was crucial in determining the amount of the fee, the Court ruled that it should have been established by a delegated act rather than by implementing decisions.
As a result, the Commission must now develop a method for calculating the average monthly active users in accordance with the DSA and issue new implementing decisions within the next 12 months. The Commission took note of the ruling but pointed out that the court had confirmed the validity of its method. It stated that the companies involved still have to pay the monitoring fees for 2023.
In March, Euronews reported that the EU executive collected a total of €58.2 million in supervisory fees from the major online platforms in 2023. However, these fees did not fully cover the Commission’s DSA-related expenses, resulting in a shortfall of more than €514,000.
Business AM
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers