ABSTRACT – In the judgment Meta Platforms e a., delivered on 4 July 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union stated that national competition authorities can find, in the context of the examination of an abuse of a dominant position by an undertaking, that the latter’s general terms of use relating to the processing of personal data and the implementation thereof are not consistent with the GDPR, where that finding is necessary to establish the existence of such an abuse. In absence of EU legislation concerning the issue, the Court clarified that the duty of cooperation between authorities stems directly from the duty of sincere cooperation, enshrined in Art. 4, para. 3, TEU. It follows from the foregoing that administrative authorities, endowed with different tasks and pursuing different objectives, must cooperate to ensure the effective application of EU competition law and, at the same time, the coherence of EU data protection legislation. The contribution aims at highlighting the novelties introduced by the judgment, against the existing legal framework. Besides that, it purports to shed light on the way how the duty of sincere cooperation shapes the relationship between national authorities, emphasizing the central role played by national data protection supervisory authorities, charged with the control of the effective application of the GDPR. As will be explained, such a solution not only involves procedural aspects, but also has substantive implications.
