'Meta platforms: How the CJEU leaves competition and data protection authorities with an assignment' by Inge Graef in (2023) Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law comments
Competition authorities can identify a violation of the data protection rules when such a finding is necessary to establish an abuse of dominance under the competition rules. This is the main outcome of the judgment that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered in Meta Platforms on 4 July 2023. The judgment is the next step in the saga that started with the 2019 competition decision of the Bundeskartellamt (the German Federal Cartel Office) requiring Facebook (now Meta) to refrain from combining user data from different sources beyond its social network. The judgment provides a welcome confirmation that data protection standards can also matter for the interpretation of the competition rules. However, what is more remarkable and less expected is the general framework the CJEU sets out for coordination between competition and data protection authorities building on the duty of sincere cooperation and the clarity with which it evaluates the different legal bases Meta invoked for processing user data. The judgment can become a reference point for assessing the legality of personal data processing by powerful firms, but also leaves competition and data protection authorities with an assignment to explore how to coordinate their work in the future. ...
In a strongly worded judgment, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on 4 July 2023 answered the preliminary questions posed to it by the Higher Regional Court in Düsseldorf about whether the approach of the Bundeskartellamt (the German Federal Cartel Office) in its 2019 competition decision against Facebook (now Meta) was in line with EU law. In that decision, the Bundeskartellamt had held Meta liable under German competition law for imposing unfair terms and conditions as assessed by reference to the standards laid down in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In its preliminary ruling, the CJEU followed the Opinion of Advocate General Rantos and endorsed the Bundeskartellamt's approach to rely on the data protection rules in the GDPR for establishing an abuse of dominance under competition law. The CJEU also clarified how to interpret the legal bases available under the GDPR for personal data processing activities conducted by a powerful player like Meta and provided a framework to guide competition and data protection authorities in coordinating cases where data protection rules are of relevance for assessing compliance with competition law as well.
While the strong statements of the CJEU about Meta's personal data processing leave little room for the Higher Regional Court in Düsseldorf to form its own opinion, the CJEU's guidance about how competition authorities should coordinate their investigations with data protection authorities is more open-ended. Even though the CJEU indicates that the Bundeskartellamt in its view met the ‘duty of sincere cooperation’ in the case at hand, future instances may not be as straightforward and require competition and data protection authorities to establish more detailed modes of collaboration based on the pointers provided by the CJEU. This is especially relevant with the entry into force of the Digital Markets Act, which regulates data-related practices that are also covered by the GDPR.
After giving an overview of the facts and background of the case in Section 2, this case comment summarizes the reasoning of the CJEU in Section 3 and then analyses several aspects of the judgment in Section 4. Section 5 concludes by giving an outlook to the future.
