The EU's General Court sides with Meta and TikTok in their legal dispute with the EC over the DSA's 0.05% supervisory fee, saying the EU's methodology is flawed
Meta Platforms (META.O) and TikTok on Wednesday won their legal fight against a European Union supervisory fee imposed …
Context & Ripple Effects
Meta and TikTok had jointly challenged the DSA levy since 2024, arguing its allocation was unfair; their later case focused on the fee’s 0.05% global-net-income basis and proportionality. The court’s finding that the methodology is flawed turns that challenge to the fee calculation into a constraint on how the Commission funds DSA oversight.
The ruling sits alongside a wider pattern of major platforms testing Commission decisions in court, including DMA-related appeals by Apple, Meta and TikTok. It matters because the dispute concerns the design of an enforcement mechanism, not just the amount payable by two companies.
First-order effects
- Meta and TikTok obtain a court win against the Commission’s existing supervisory-fee methodology; the Commission must address the flaw rather than rely on that methodology unchanged.
- The DSA fee framework faces immediate legal uncertainty for the platforms covered by it, even though the ruling does not itself establish that no supervisory fee can be charged.
Second-order effects
- A revised methodology could redistribute supervisory-fee obligations among covered platforms, making the allocation formula—not only the 0.05% ceiling—the central point of compliance and litigation risk.
- Other large platforms gain a concrete precedent for scrutinizing DSA cost-allocation decisions, reinforcing the incentives behind earlier joint challenges to the levy.
Third-order effects
- If EU digital-rule funding mechanisms continue to be litigated successfully, the Commission will need more legally resilient calculation methods before enforcement costs can be assigned to platforms.
- The case underscores that platform regulation is increasingly shaped by implementation disputes—fees, classifications and procedures—alongside substantive content and competition obligations.
The trend: EU platform regulation is moving into a more contested implementation phase, where courts increasingly determine the boundaries of how enforcement costs and obligations are imposed.