LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) -EU antitrust regulators’ searches were compared to those of a fishing super trawler on Wednesday. Regulators are looking into the owner of Facebook’s (NASDAQ: FB Data) online marketplace.
The company says that it has already given the European Commission more than a million documents about its Facebook Marketplace, social networking, and online classified ads since it first asked for them in 2019.
But the company has questioned whether the data requests and the reasons given by the watchdog are necessary and fair. It has also been said that the agency shouldn’t have used 2,500 search terms to look through the company’s documents, such as “big question,” “free,” and “not good for us.”
Meta has since taken its complaint to the EU’s second-highest court, the General Court. If Meta doesn’t meet the demands, it will have to pay an $8.6 million fine every day.
The lawyer for Meta, Daniel Jowell, told the panel of five judges, “One needs to put together the vague nature of what is being investigated with these incredibly broad and general search terms.” “Once you do that, it’s clear what’s going on, if I may say so. This is a classic trip to go fishing.
“Yes, we’d go even further.” “The Commission is like a fishing super-trawler that is sweeping up the whole seabed so that it can see if it catches any rare fish in its huge nets,” said Jowell.
The Commission didn’t agree with the complaints.
The watchdog’s lawyer, Giuseppe Conte, told the court, “The accusation of a fishing expedition is clearly false.” He also said that the Commission was looking into seven anti-competitive practices and had asked for documents to see if there were any violations.
“The subject matter was described in clear enough terms,” said Conte.
He said that, according to case law, the EU Competition Agency is not required to explain the search terms it uses, and that the number of search terms was only increased because Meta only had a few documents in the first stage.
In a few months, the court will make a decision.
The cases are called T-451/20 and T-452/20, Meta Platforms Ireland v. Commission.
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