Meta Asks General Court to Annul Commission WhatsApp Antitrust Decision

Meta Platforms, Inc. has asked the General Court of the European Union to annul the European Commission’s decision of 9 June 2026 requiring it to open the WhatsApp Business API free of charge and prohibiting it from levying any fee. The action was brought on 7 August 2026 and published in the Official Journal of the European Union of 9 November 2026 under reference C/2026/5627, registered as Case T-521/26. The applicant relies on eight pleas in law against a decision adopted as interim measures in Case AT.41034 – Exclusion of AI Competitors from WhatsApp.

The contested act was adopted by the Commission under Article 8(1) of Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2003 of 16 December 2002 on the implementation of the competition rules laid down in Articles 81 and 82 of the Treaty. The proceedings concern the application of Article 102 TFEU and Article 54 of the EEA Agreement to the applicant’s conduct, and the Commission concluded that this conduct was capable of producing exclusionary effects in the EEA-wide market for general purpose AI assistants. The applicant is Meta Platforms, Inc., of Menlo Park, California, United States, represented by W. Ellison and J. Slade, lawyers, and B. Kennelly, Senior Counsel; the language of the case is English.

What Meta is asking the court to do

The action, lodged pursuant to Article 263 TFEU, sets out a graduated set of claims:

• annul the contested decision in full;
• in the alternative, annul Articles 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the decision insofar as they mandate free access to the WhatsApp Business API, prohibit the applicant from charging any fee, and impose periodic penalty payments for failure to comply;
• in the further alternative, annul Article 5 of the decision insofar as it imposes a three-year duration;
• in any event, order the Commission to bear the applicant’s costs and expenses.

The eight pleas in law

The applicant argues that the decision errs in law, commits numerous errors of assessment and fails to comply with the duty to state reasons under Article 296 TFEU. The pleas run as follows:

• first, manifest errors of law and assessment, including application of the wrong analytical framework, in the assessment of market definition and dominance, with inadequate reasoning;
• second, no prima facie infringement of Article 102 TFEU, because the legal framework used to assess the conduct is wrong in law;
• third, in the alternative, no prima facie infringement even on the decision’s own application of the law, since the conduct does not depart from competition on the merits;
• fourth, errors in finding that the conduct is capable of producing exclusionary effects in the EEA-wide market for general purpose AI assistants;
• fifth, errors in finding that the conditions for interim measures under Article 8 of Regulation No 1/2003 were satisfied;
• sixth, manifest errors in the proportionality assessment and inadequate reasons, the measures being disproportionate and failing on the balance of interests;
• seventh, in the alternative, errors regarding the applicant’s objective justifications for its conduct;
• eighth, failure to state adequate reasons under Article 296 TFEU for imposing free access.

Interim measures under challenge

Two of the pleas target the procedural gateway itself: the Commission’s use of Article 8 of Regulation No 1/2003, which allows the authority to impose interim measures in cases of urgency, and the proportionality of what was ordered. The applicant contests the finding that the conditions for such measures were met at all, and argues separately that the imposed obligations are disproportionate and fail on the balance of interests. A third line of attack questions whether free access to the WhatsApp Business API was reasoned at all, since the eighth plea is dedicated exclusively to the alleged absence of adequate reasons for that specific obligation. The decision’s three-year duration is contested in its own right through the request to annul Article 5.

The case places the interoperability of a major messaging service and the conditions of competition in the market for general purpose AI assistants before the General Court. For businesses and developers relying on the WhatsApp Business API, and for AI assistant providers seeking access to messaging channels, the litigation will determine whether free access and the prohibition on fees survive judicial review, and how far the Commission may go in ordering conduct changes before completing its substantive investigation.

Source: Official Journal of the European Union, C/2026/5627, 9 November 2026, Section I (official reference: C/2026/5627).