A PYMNTS Company

Meta, TikTok Take EU to Court Over Disputed Digital Oversight Fee

By  |  June 11, 2025

Meta Platforms and TikTok brought their legal battle against European Union regulators to the General Court on Wednesday, arguing that a supervisory fee imposed under the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA) is unjust and improperly calculated.

    Get the Full Story

    Complete the form to unlock this article and enjoy unlimited free access to all PYMNTS content — no additional logins required.

    yesSubscribe to our daily newsletter, PYMNTS Today.

    By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions.

    According to Reuters, the two tech giants told the Luxembourg-based court that the European Commission’s method for determining the fee was flawed and lacked transparency. The companies are among 19 major digital platforms subject to an annual levy designed to fund the Commission’s oversight efforts under the DSA, a regulation introduced in 2022 to better police online content and user safety.

    The disputed fee amounts to 0.05% of each company’s annual global net income and is calculated based on average monthly active users and financial performance over the previous year. Per Reuters, Meta’s legal representative Assimakis Komninos argued that the methodology used to determine the company’s payment lacked clarity and deviated from the intent of the law.

    Komninos emphasized to the five-judge panel that Meta is not attempting to avoid its financial obligations, but questioned why the Commission used the broader group revenue rather than subsidiary-specific figures. “The provisions in the Digital Services Act… are totally untransparent with black boxes and have led to completely implausible and absurd results,” he said.

    Related: Meta, Apple Launch Legal Challenges to EU DMA Rulings

    TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, echoed similar frustrations. Reuters reported that TikTok’s lawyer Bill Batchelor accused the Commission of inflating the platform’s share of the fee by using incorrect data and discriminatory criteria. He contended that the methodology effectively forced TikTok to subsidize compliance monitoring for other platforms and breached a cap designed to prevent excessive charges.

    Batchelor also criticized the Commission’s user-counting methods, claiming that individuals switching between devices were double-counted, which unfairly increased TikTok’s active user figures. Additionally, he argued that the decision to tie the fee cap to group-level profits exceeded the Commission’s legal authority.

    The Commission pushed back against the criticisms. As per Reuters, its lawyer Lorna Armati defended the use of group profits in the fee calculation, maintaining that the approach falls within the legal parameters of the DSA and ensures a consistent application across platforms.

    Source: Reuters