Meta files legal complaint about platform supervisory fee under DSA
Meta has filed a legal complaint at the General Court in Luxembourg for having to pay a supervisory fee imposed by the European Commission under the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
Companies designated as a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP), online platforms with more than 45 million monthly average users in the EU, must abide by strict rules, such as transparency requirements and the protection of minors online.
They must also pay fees to the commission amounting to 0.05% of their annual worldwide net income aimed at financing regulators' costs for monitoring compliance with the rules.
A Meta spokesperson told Euronews that the company has “already introduced a number of measures” to ensure DSA compliance, but “disagrees with the methodology used to calculate these fees.”
“Currently, companies that record a loss don’t have to pay, even if they have a large user base or represent a greater regulatory burden, which means some companies pay nothing, leaving others to pay a disproportionate amount of the total,” the spokesperson said.
Previously, e-commerce platform Amazon and German retailer Zalando have challenged their designation as a VLOP.
The DSA applied since last August to the biggest 22 platforms or VLOPs including YouTube, Booking.com and Facebook, but general obligations including submitting data on content moderation decisions to a transparency database will apply to the rest of the platforms, with fewer users, as of 17 February.
