Poland demands €250 million fine for Meta over fraudulent advertising

Polish Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski has called on the European Commission to impose a €250 million fine on Meta. The reason, he said, was the company’s insufficiently effective fight against fraudulent advertising on its own platforms. Polish cybersecurity experts claim that Meta decided not to remove most of the ads they complained about.

This is reported by Reuters.

Gawkowski said that Polish state authorities and cybersecurity teams had repeatedly informed the company about the problem, but, in his opinion, there was no proper response.

The minister wrote to the European Commission in which he proposed to apply financial sanctions to Meta.

86.8% of ads were not removed after complaints

One of the main arguments of the Polish side was the results of testing conducted by the national cyber incident response team CERT Polska.

Experts identified 122 advertisements that were classified as fraudulent and reported them to Meta.

According to Hawkowski, the results of the complaint review were as follows:

in 106 cases, or 86.8%, Meta decided not to remove the ads;
10 advertisements were removed;
in another 6 cases, no response was received.

Thus, the Polish side believes that the current mechanisms for moderating and responding to reports of potentially fraudulent content are not effective enough.

Meta is required to change the system

Krzysztof Hawkowski also called on the company to immediately strengthen its tools to combat fraud.

This includes, in particular, the detection and removal of false advertising, fraudulent ads and advertising of illegal applications.

This is not the first time that the problem of fraudulent advertising on Meta platforms has become a subject of discussion in Poland.

Polish billionaire has already sued Meta

A separate conflict with the company arose from Polish billionaire Rafal Brzoska, who filed a lawsuit over false advertisements.

In April 2026, the Warsaw Court of Appeal ruled in this case that Meta is responsible for the advertisements placed on its platforms.

The company itself insisted during the trial that it should not be responsible for the fraudulent actions of users.

Now the issue may move to the level of the European Commission. The Polish side insists on a fine of €250 million, but the final decision on possible sanctions must be made at the level of the relevant European institutions.