LUXEMBOURG—Antitrust authorities may assess whether companies comply with EU data protection rules during their investigations, an adviser to Europe’s top court said on Tuesday, dealing a possible blow to Meta Platforms in its fight against the German competition agency.
The non-binding opinion, if followed by the Court of the Justice of the Europe Union (CJEU) in the coming weeks, could further embolden the German enforcer and its peers in other EU countries to widen their scrutiny of Big Tech based on privacy rules.
Meta’s battle with the German cartel office started in 2019 after the latter said the world’s largest social network had abused its market power by collecting users’ data without their consent and ordered it to stop….