Luxembourg, January 12, 2026 — The European Commission (EC) has appealed two General Court judgments that annulled its Digital Services Act (DSA) supervisory fee decisions for TikTok and for Meta’s Facebook and Instagram services, asking the EU Court of Justice to overturn the rulings and reinstate the Commission’s original approach to calculating the fees.
In both cases, the Commission is seeking to set aside the General Court’s September 10, 2025, judgments and is asking the Court of Justice to issue a final ruling in its favor or send the matters back to the lower court to consider remaining arguments.
The first-instance court annulled the EU decisions, finding that the methodology used to calculate the average monthly active users, essentially a common methodology used for the fee-setting process, was adopted incorrectly through implementing decisions rather than a delegated act, as required under the DSA.
The appeals challenge the General Court’s interpretation of the Commission’s implementing decisions issued on November 27, 2023, which set supervisory fees under Article 43(3) of the DSA based on the number of “average monthly active recipients” (AMAR) in the EU for very large online platforms and search engines.
According to the Commission, the General Court wrongly treated explanatory annexes to the fee decisions as a formal methodology for calculating AMAR, rather than as reasoning explaining why the Commission relied on “other available information” instead of platforms’ self-reported AMAR figures. The Commission said the annexes were included to explain the sources used, how information was extracted and aggregated, and why multiple sources were needed to arrive at reliable AMAR estimates for determining the relevant fee coefficient.
In a second ground of appeal in both cases, the Commission argued that the General Court misinterpreted and misapplied Articles 43(4) and 87 of the DSA by effectively requiring the Commission to embed the annex explanations into the delegated regulation governing the fee framework whenever it relies on “other available information” for AMAR calculations.
The Commission said the General Court conflated different empowerment provisions in the DSA and failed to recognize that the Commission’s discretion is already constrained by parameters in the DSA itself when determining AMAR for supervisory cost allocation.
The cases are C-745/25 P (TikTok Technology v Commission) and C-744/25 P (Meta Platforms Ireland v Commission) before the European Court of Justice.
Source: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/oj/daily-view/C-series/default.html?&ojDate=12012026
