Poland asks EU to fine Meta €250 million over scam ads as Meta adds checks

Poland has stepped up a long-running fight with Meta over ads that cheat people. Krzysztof Gawkowski, deputy prime minister and minister for digital affairs, sent a formal request to the European Commission on August 26. He wants the Commission to fine Meta €250 million, about one billion zlotys. He says the company has failed again and again to remove scam ads, fake investment offers using famous people’s faces, and fake shops from Facebook and Instagram. He announced the move on X the next day, saying the “wild west” on the platform had to end.

The ministry builds its case on its own record of reports. According to Wirtualne Media, Poland’s CERT, the national team that handles computer security incidents, told Meta about 122 scam ads. Meta refused to act on 106 of them and removed only ten. The Polish request is a recommendation, not a punishment. Under the Digital Services Act, the European Union’s rulebook for big online platforms, only the Commission can fine a very large platform. Fines are capped at six percent of a company’s global turnover, and Meta would first get a chance to reply. Poland’s competition watchdog UOKiK also has its own case open against the company, about how customers can contact it and how its ads work.

Meta is starting an AI scam-ad detection model built for Poland

Meta replied within a day with a set of measures for Poland, reported by Bankier.pl. The company says it is starting to use a new AI detection model built for Poland, one of the first such rollouts in Europe. Within weeks it will also ask every advertiser of financial services aimed at Polish users to prove who they are. Until now it checked only accounts that looked suspicious. Meta also gave its own figures. It says it removed about 137,000 fraudulent ads from Poland between July 2025 and June 2026, and that eighty-eight percent of those went before any user reported them. It says complaints about fraud have fallen by eighty-three percent in two years. Around the world, Meta wants ninety percent of its ad money to come from checked advertisers by the end of 2026, up from seventy percent last year.

InPost founder Rafał Brzoska says €250 million is too small

Pressure is coming from business as well as from government. Rafał Brzoska, who founded InPost, has had his face used in fake arrest stories and investment scams. He argues that €250 million is too small to change how Meta behaves, and that only fines worth several billion would work. His “150 percent” campaign proposes fines equal to one and a half times the money earned from scams. It gathered close to 100,000 signatures in a week. Whatever Brussels decides, the case shows that one national government can push Meta into changing its product without waiting for a Commission ruling. Checking advertisers, long resisted because it slows people down, is becoming normal for sensitive categories. Legitimate financial brands advertising in Poland should expect to go through those checks soon.