The Adovcate General has recently issued his opinion in the joined Cases C-496/23 P | Meta Platforms Ireland v Commission (Facebook Marketplace) and C-497/23 P | Meta Platforms Ireland v Commission (Facebook Data).
He advises the Court of Justice to dismiss Meta’s appeals concerning an ongoing EU investigation into potential abuse of a dominant position relating to the use of Facebook data and the Facebook Marketplace service.
Meta had appealed two judgments of the General Court, which upheld the European Commission’s right to require the company to hand over internal documents identified using sets of electronic search terms. These requests were made in 2020 as part of the Commission’s investigation. After interim proceedings, the Commission issued amended decisions that introduced a virtual data room procedure to manage access to documents containing sensitive personal information.
In May 2023, the General Court dismissed Meta’s challenges, finding that the Commission’s requests were sufficiently reasoned, necessary and proportionate, and that they respected both privacy rights and the principle of good administration.
In his recent Opinion, Advocate General Rantos agrees. He considers that the General Court correctly assessed both the necessity of the information sought and the safeguards in place.
He emphasises that the procedural regulation governing competition investigations grants the Commission wide investigatory powers, allowing it to request all information necessary for its work. While the Commission must explain the purpose of its investigation and the suspected infringement, it does not need to give a detailed legal assessment at that stage or justify the relevance of each individual document.
According to the Advocate General, the General Court was right to conclude that the Commission’s use of search terms met the regulatory requirement of necessity. Even if the searches captured some irrelevant material, the Commission could reasonably expect the results to assist its inquiry. He also notes that necessity and proportionality cannot be assessed purely on quantitative grounds and that the Commission has discretion in choosing appropriate investigatory techniques. The procedural protections governing information requests—different from those applicable to inspections—were considered adequate.
The Advocate General further agrees with the General Court’s view that the Commission was entitled to process “mixed” documents (those containing both personal data and other information) without always applying the virtual data room procedure. This type of processing, he says, is inherent to the Commission’s public‑interest role in competition enforcement. The proportionality assessment was, in his view, correctly applied: the documents concerned did not contain sensitive personal data, access was tightly controlled, and there was no disproportionate interference with privacy.
