Meta, the parent company of Facebook, and TikTok have won a legal case against the European Union over the way a fee was calculated that they were required to pay. However, they will not get the money they already paid back, as the EU now has to change how it calculates the fee.
The fee, set at 0.05% of a company’s global yearly income, was meant to cover the EU’s cost of making sure these large tech platforms follow new rules under the Digital Services Act (DSA). This law, which came into effect in November 2022, asks major online platforms to take stronger action against illegal and harmful content, or face fines of up to 6% of their global earnings.
The fee’s size was based on how many users each platform has every month and whether it made a profit or not in the previous year. Meta and TikTok argued that this method was unfair and made them pay more than they should.
A court in Luxembourg agreed with them, saying that the EU should have used a different legal process to create the rules for calculating the fee. The judges gave the EU 12 months to fix the issue by using the proper legal procedure.
However, the court did not order the EU to return the money the companies had already paid for 2023. A spokesperson for the European Commission, which enforces EU laws, said the decision was only about how the rules were made—not about whether the fee itself was right. The spokesperson added that the Commission would now follow the proper steps to update the fee rules.
TikTok welcomed the ruling, saying it would closely monitor how the new rules are developed. Meta also expressed support, saying the case highlighted problems with the way the fee was applied. A spokesperson pointed out that companies losing money shouldn’t be forced to pay high fees while others with smaller user bases cover more of the costs.
Besides Meta and TikTok, other large tech companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Booking.com, Snapchat, and Elon Musk’s X are also required to pay this fee.
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