The European Union hit Facebook’s parent company, Meta, with a record €797.7 antitrust fine Thursday, the first time the U.S. tech giant has found itself in regulators’ crosshairs for breaching the bloc’s tough competition rules.

A spokesperson for Meta told Law.com International that Freshfields would represent the company as it appeals the fine, which is among the largest in the history of EU antitrust enforcement.

The fine follows a probe EU officials launched in 2021 over concerns that Meta tied its popular online classified ads service, Facebook Marketplace, to its social network Facebook and imposed unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads service providers

“It did so to benefit its own service, Facebook Marketplace, thereby giving it advantages that other online classified ads service providers could not match. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules,” outgoing EU antitrust commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement. “Meta must now stop this behavior.”

In a statement posted to its website shortly after the fine was announced, the California-headquartered social-networking giant said it would challenge the fine in court.

“We strongly disagree with the decision, which totally fails to demonstrate any actual harm. It also entirely distorts—and stretches … —EU competition law,” Meta policy communications manager Matthew Pollard said in an email, adding that Freshfields would represent the company in court.

A spokesperson for Freshfields said London-based partners James Aitken and Sharon Malhi, and Brussels partner Tone Oeyen would lead on the matter.

As both the European Commission and Meta could appeal any judgment given by the lower EU General Court, it could be several years before a final decision is rendered. The fine will go into an escrow account or be “set aside in some way” until that time, a person close to the matter said.

In 2023, Meta was hit with both a €210 million and a €180 million fine over failure to comply with the EU's tough data privacy laws. Later that year, another €1.2 billion GDPR fine followed, the largest EU privacy fine to date.