STORY: Meta and TikTok won a legal challenge with the EU Wednesday.
It was about the way the bloc’s regulators calculated a supervisory fee imposed on them under landmark tech rules.
Meta and TikTok sued the European Commission after they were hit with a supervisory fee of 0.05% of their annual worldwide net income.
The number was to cover the EU executive’s cost of monitoring their compliance with the Digital Services Act.
The size of the annual fee is tied to the number of average monthly active users for each company.
And whether they post a profit or loss in the preceding financial year.
The firms argued the EU’s methodology was flawed and led to disproportionate fees.
The Luxembourg-based General Court sided with Meta and TikTok Wednesday.
It gave EU regulators 12 months to fix their approach using a different legal act.
But they said regulators don’t need to repay fees paid by the companies in 2023 for now.
The Commission said the court had confirmed it sees no issue with the principle of the fee nor the amount.
The EU’s Digital Services Act launched almost three years ago.
It requires very large online platforms to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content on their sites.
Or risk fines as much as 6% of their annual global turnover.
