Poland asks EU to fine Meta €250 million over scam ads on Facebook and Instagram

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Polish Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski asked the European Commission to fine Meta €250 million, alleging it is failing to tackle scams and fake ads on its platforms.

Gawkowski also asked for an investigation into Facebook and Instagram’s parent company in a letter to EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen dated Aug. 26 and seen by POLITICO. Gawkowski serves as Poland’s digital affairs minister.

The Commission, which oversees large platforms like Meta under the Digital Services Act, has yet to open any investigations into how they tackle financial scams, nor has it imposed any fines on social media companies for lapses in how they protect users more broadly.

Meta’s reported removals of scams and fraud on its platforms in the EU “show that scams are not a marginal phenomenon occurring outside the platform’s main operating model,” but rather one of “the largest and most persistent forms of abuse within the Meta ecosystem,” the deputy PM wrote.

Polish authorities and cybersecurity teams have notified Meta multiple times, but the company still doesn’t ensure “an effective and adequate response to scam advertisements,” Gawkowski wrote.

A cybersecurity team within Poland’s National Research Institute reported 122 advertisements to Meta as fraudulent and only 13 percent were removed, he said. The deputy PM also cited a complaint from the consumer organization BEUC, which found that across 13 countries, only 27 percent of fraudulent ads were removed from Google, Meta and TikTok.

The Commission and Meta didn’t respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

The Commission sent a request for information to four platforms in September 2025 about how they tackle scams: Apple, Booking.com, Google and Microsoft.

Gawkowski is asking for an investigation into breaches of six articles of the DSA, including risk assessment and mitigation, advertiser transparency and mechanisms for reporting illegal content. He is also asking Meta to take a series of mitigation measures on top of the fine.