At a hearing before the ECJ in Luxembourg on Tuesday, the Facebook parent company Meta sharply criticized the actions of the Federal Cartel Office, which wants to put a stop to the comprehensive collection of data from Facebook users.

On the one hand, the underlying decision by the competition authorities, which dates back to 2019, underlines the growing pressure on US Internet companies such as Facebook.

However, in this specific case it is also up for debate whether the antitrust authorities have exceeded their powers when dealing with data protection issues.

The order of the Federal Cartel Office for the "far-reaching restrictions" of Facebook is clearly incorrect, said meta-lawyer Hans-Georg Kamann before a 15-member ECJ judges panel.

The Bonn authority had thus openly violated the provisions of the European General Data Protection Regulation.

Kamann accused the cartel office of not having the Irish

Cartel office representative Jörg Nothdurft did not accept this accusation and explained that there had indeed been contacts with the Irish authorities.

The Federal Government defended the Cartel Office's decision to also investigate data protection issues in the interests of protecting competition.

After all, user data is used by tech companies to expand their market power, said the legal representative of the federal government, Philipp Krüger.

The Cartel Office ruled in 2019 that Facebook had abused its market power by collecting certain data from users without their express consent.

It was about personal data that users leave behind on Whatsapp or Instagram, which also belong to Facebook, and other services.

The Cartel Office had also prohibited Facebook from merging user data from different sources with reference to data protection.

The US group is taking legal action against this.

The Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court, which was last responsible, is now having central questions clarified by the ECJ.