EU Court Annuls Facebook Marketplace Gatekeeper Designation, Upholds Messenger Ruling

This is a stark rebuke of the Commission’s procedural rigor, indicating that DMA designations cannot rely on presumptions without a thorough, fact-specific analysis of the company's current state at the time of the decision.

Why the Marketplace victory is largely academic

Despite the legal win, the practical impact on Meta is minimal. The European Commission had already withdrawn Marketplace's gatekeeper designation on April 23, 2025—more than a year before the court's judgment . Following Meta's request to undesignate the service, the Commission concluded that Marketplace had "less than 10,000 yearly active business users in 2024," dropping it below the threshold that triggers the DMA's gatekeeper presumptions .

Meta had actively converted Marketplace to a consumer-to-consumer (C2C) service by removing business users, effectively sidestepping the DMA's obligations for that specific platform. As RTE noted, the court's annulment for Marketplace is therefore "largely academic," serving only to formalize a designation that was already lifted .

Meta acknowledged this in a statement: "We welcome the Court's judgment on Marketplace, which confirms that it should not have been designated in the first place" .

Messenger: a standalone gateway with no escape from double-counting

In contrast, the General Court fully upheld the Commission's designation of Messenger as a gatekeeper, dismissing Meta's appeal on three fronts .

Messenger was correctly classified as a distinct service. Meta had argued that Messenger was merely an integrated feature of the Facebook social network, not a standalone platform. The Court disagreed, finding that Messenger is a number-independent interpersonal communications service that operates as a separate app, can be used independently of Facebook, and is actively marketed for business use through its dedicated tools .

Users can be double-counted across services. Meta's argument that the quantitative thresholds were invalid because Messenger's users overlapped with Facebook's user base was rejected. The Court held that when counting end users for DMA thresholds, the Commission is not required to deduct overlap between services. This is a significant interpretive win for enforcers, preventing tech giants with large, overlapping ecosystems from undermining the numerical criteria that trigger gatekeeper status .

No market investigation was required. The Court ruled that the Commission was not obliged to open a formal market investigation before designating Messenger because Meta failed to present "sufficiently substantiated arguments" that would "manifestly call into question" the legal presumptions under the DMA . This reinforces the strength of the DMA’s rebuttable presumptions and places the initial burden of producing counter-evidence firmly on the designated company.

Broader implications for DMA enforcement

This split decision provides a roadmap for future enforcement under the EU’s landmark tech regulation.

• A warning on designation quality: The Marketplace annulment signals that the Commission must produce robust, current, and transparent analysis at the designation stage. Reliance on outdated data and vague reasoning will be struck down. The judgment may force the Commission to invest more resources in creating detailed, evidence-backed designation decisions that can withstand judicial scrutiny .
• Validation of ecosystem disaggregation: By upholding the Messenger designation, the Court affirmed the Commission’s strategy of treating integrated features within a large digital ecosystem as individual core platform services. This reasoning could be applied to other cases across the industry, making it more difficult for gatekeepers to shield specific services within their broader platforms .
• DMA presumptions remain strong: The ruling on Messenger demonstrates that companies face a high bar to avoid designation once quantitative thresholds are met. The Court rejected Meta’s procedural arguments, confirming that the DMA’s presumptions are a powerful tool for regulators and that companies cannot automatically slow-walk the process with demands for market investigations .
• A path for further appeal: Either party can appeal the judgment to the Court of Justice of the European Union on points of law only, within two months and ten days . An appeal could further clarify the exact standard of reasoning required at the designation stage versus the compliance stage, an issue that remains a critical frontier in DMA jurisprudence.