At the beginning of 2019, the German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) prohibited Facebook from pooling user data from its various services (in particular Facebook and WhatsApp). After years of legal disputes that went all the way to the ECJ, these proceedings have now come to an end after the company, now trading as Meta, promised the FCO comprehensive measures. Some of these have already been implemented or will be implemented in the coming weeks.

The most important measures taken by Meta

An ‘account overview’ has been available to users since last year. This allows users to obtain information and decide whether their data should be merged and linked to the Group’s various offers. Users are now free to decide whether or not their data should be used in isolation from Meta.

The other measures include an upstream signpost that clearly points out and explains the additional measure of introducing ‘cookie’ settings to separate Facebook data from other data.

The FCO describes the measures promised by Meta as a ‘sufficiently suitable package of measures’ but points out that this does not completely eliminate all antitrust concerns.

Outlook

The FCO points out that further regulations by the Commission in exercising its powers under the DMA are possible as well as possible interventions by data protection authorities. Nevertheless, the conclusion of the proceedings once again confirms that the FCO sees its powers under Section 19a ARC as a separate instrument alongside the Commission’s powers under the DMA and will continue to make use of them in future.