# EU court frees Meta’s Marketplace from gatekeeper rules but keeps Messenger in > Source: > Published: 2026-06-03 10:00:28+00:00 *The General Court annulled the Commission’s designation of Marketplace under the Digital Markets Act, faulting its reasoning, while upholding the same label for Messenger.* Meta walked into the EU’s General Court asking it to strike down two gatekeeper labels and walked out having shed one. On 3 June the Luxembourg court [annulled the European Commission’s designation of Facebook Marketplace](https://www.reuters.com/world/eu-court-backs-meta-fight-against-gatekeeper-label-marketplace-not-messenger-2026-06-03/) as a “core platform service” under the Digital Markets Act, while upholding the same designation for Messenger. It is a split decision, and the reasons for the split matter more than the scoreline. The court did not find that Marketplace is harmless or unimportant. It found that the Commission had not explained itself properly. The decision, the judges held,* “does not satisfy the requirements in terms of reasoning as regards Marketplace,”* failing to take account of recent developments in the service and leaving neither Meta nor the courts able to understand or review why it had been classified as a regulated gateway. That is an annulment on procedural grounds, not a ruling that Marketplace falls outside the DMA’s reach. The distinction is the whole story. The Digital Markets Act lets the Commission designate the largest platforms as “gatekeepers” and impose standing obligations on them, interoperability, limits on self-preferencing, restrictions on combining user data, without litigating each case as a separate abuse. The regime’s speed and breadth are its point, and also its vulnerability: when a regulator can label a service a gateway and attach heavy obligations to it, the quality of the reasoning behind the label is what stops the power from becoming arbitrary. The court has now told the Commission its Marketplace reasoning did not clear that bar. For Messenger, the same scrutiny produced the opposite result. Meta failed to overturn the 2023 decision subjecting the messaging service to tighter regulation, and the gatekeeper obligations on it stand. Meta got a fuller hearing on both services and a divided verdict, which is arguably a more useful outcome for the law than a clean win for either side, because it shows the court willing to police the Commission’s reasoning without dismantling the regime. The practical effect on Marketplace is limited and probably temporary. An annulment for inadequate reasoning is the kind of defeat a regulator can cure: the Commission can issue a fresh designation with the analysis the court found missing, this time addressing the developments it overlooked. Meta has bought time and a procedural point rather than a permanent exemption, and the company will know it. What the ruling does is sharpen the terms of the DMA fight rather than settle it. Meta and Apple have both mounted legal challenges to their treatment under the act, and the broader contest between Brussels and the large American platforms has been less about whether the rules apply than about how, and on what evidence, they are imposed. Wednesday’s judgment lands squarely in that argument: it leaves the DMA’s architecture intact while insisting the Commission show its working. For everyone watching the act’s durability, that is the signal worth taking. The General Court has not weakened the gatekeeper regime; it has demanded the regulator wield it with better-documented reasoning. Brussels tends to write the rule first and refine the enforcement afterwards, and this is the refinement arriving. The Commission keeps its powers. It now has to use them more carefully, and Marketplace is the case that made the point. ## Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.