Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta is set to receive a fine that could reach up to an A$1.6 billion fine for violating the bloc’s stringent antitrust rules.
The European Commission is expected to soon conclude that Meta was not in compliance with the Digital Markets Act, reported The New York Post.
The EU’s probe into Meta could finish as early as this week, with an announcement of the fine and enforcement action to follow immediately after.
Meta is also expected to be hit with a “cease-and-desist” notice which would inform it of the remedial steps that it will have to undertake.
Last July, preliminary charges by EU accused Meta of violating the DMA by forcing customers into a “pay or consent” model for ads on Instagram and Facebook.
It related to Meta’s subscription service introduced in 2023 in which users could pay the equivalent of A$22 per month for an ad-free experience on the apps, or consent to Meta using their personal data for targeted ads.
“This binary choice forces users to consent to the combination of their personal data and fails to provide them a less personalised but equivalent version of Meta’s social networks,” the European Commission said in a statement at the time.
The company has in the past moved to bring about changes to its operations to comply with local regulations.
Last month, Meta has reluctantly opened its Facebook Marketplace platform to classified ads rivals after regulators imposed a A$1.32 billion fine on the company.
It now allows classified ad firms in Europe to pay to place their listings on Facebook Marketplace in order to comply with an EU antitrust order. The cost will be based on the number of times a user clicks on a button within the listing.
Facebook said that although it has implemented this change, it continues to disagree with the EU’s decision which has forced it do so.
Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has attempted to draw comparisons between EU antitrust fines and a tariff regime. Zuckerberg has said the EU’s fines targeting Big Tech companies were “almost like a tariff” and have become “sort of like an EU-wide policy for how they want to deal with American tech.”
Trump reportedly issued a memo last month warning that his administration will “consider responsive actions like tariffs to combat the digital service taxes (DSTs), fines, practices, and policies that foreign governments levy on American companies.”
“President Trump will not allow foreign governments to appropriate America’s tax base for their own benefit,” the White House said at the time.
