Virtual Markets, Real Jurisdiction: The ‘Apple’ of Discord in Article 7(2) Brussels I bis (Case C-34/24, Stichting v Apple )
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Judgment of 2 December 2025, Stichting v Apple, C-34/24, ECLI:EU:C:2025:936 (Grand Chamber). By treating the Dutch App Store as a national ‘virtual market’, the Court enables a single Dutch court to hear a countrywide collective action against Apple. On 2 December 2025, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice delivered an important ruling in Stichting v Apple (C-34/24), addressing the jurisdictional challenge of digital mass claims under Regulation (EU) No. 1215/2012 (Brussels I bis), which sets the EU rules on which courts have jurisdiction in civil and commercial cross-border disputes and how judgments are recognized and enforced across Member States. The case sits at the intersection of two evolving legal landscapes: the rise of collective redress mechanisms in Europe (exemplified in this case by the Dutch so-called WAMCA regime, which is the collective action framework that lets qualified representative organizations bring mass claims in the Netherlands) and the difficulty of applying traditional jurisdictional rules to the borderless digital economy. As an exception, Article 7(2) of Brussels I bis confers special jurisdiction in matters of tort on the courts of the place where the harmful event occurred. This has long been interpreted (see, eg Case 21/76 Bear, ECLI:EU:C:1976:166, para. 19) as granting an option between the place of the event giving rise to the damage and the place where the damage occurred. Yet, the Court has long warned against turning that formula into an open-ended ‘effects’ jurisdiction (Case C-364/93 Marinari, ECLI:EU:C:1995:289, para. 14). The application of Article 7(2) of Brussels I bis to mass claims has been fraught with friction. While the Court had previously facilitated centralisation in cases involving the assignment of claims to a vehicle (as, eg in Case C-352/13 CDC Hydrogen Peroxide, ECLI:EU:C:2015:335), the path for representative actions brought by entities in their own right remained unclear. The Brussels I bis Regulation does not contain bespoke rules for representative actions, and Directive 2020/1828 was not used to amend it (something the Advocate General in its Opinion of 27 March 2025, ECLI:EU:C:2025:212, explicitly mentioned, para. 107–110). The risk of jurisdictional fragmentation, whereby claims would have to be dispersed across multiple local courts based on individual consumer domiciles, threatened the effectiveness of the new collective redress instruments. The Court, in C-34/24, was therefore invited to do what the legislators did not: adapt Article 7(2) of Brussels I bis to the digital world and opt-out collective actions. The dispute stems from two representative actions brought by Dutch foundations, Stichting Right to Consumer Justice and Stichting App Stores Claims, before the District Court of Amsterdam. The foundations sought a declaration that Apple had abused its dominant position (Article 102 TFEU) by charging excessive commissions on app purchases and in-app transactions within the App Store. The commissions were charged to app developers and then passed on to iOS users with a Dutch Apple ID. The action was therefore brought on behalf of a group of unidentified but identifiable iOS users who had made purchases via the Netherlands storefront, the ‘App Store NL’. Apple contested the jurisdiction of the Dutch courts. It argued that the ‘harmful event’ did not occur in the Netherlands, or at least not in Amsterdam. In the alternative, Apple contended that under the strict application of Article 7(2) of Brussels 1 bis, territorial jurisdiction should be linked to the domicile of each individual victim. This would have required distributing the claims across the eleven district courts of the Netherlands, probably paralyzing the collective action. The Amsterdam District Court, while establishing its international jurisdiction based on the affected market (Netherlands), referred questions to the Court of Justice regarding the determination of territorial jurisdiction. Indeed, in the presence of multiple (allegedly) harmed users and several courts within one Member State that could, in principle, claim jurisdiction under Article 7(2), how do you decide on territorial jurisdiction? The Court’s ruling navigates a tension between the orthodox, strict interpretation of special jurisdiction and the pragmatic necessities of digital enforcement. It is important to reflect first on the Advocate General’s Opinion as background. Advocate General Campos Sánchez-Bordona delivered a nuanced Opinion in March 2025. His analysis prioritized a strict and autonomous interpretation of Article 7(2) Brussels I bis (para. 40–41). He grappled extensively with the dematerialized nature of the App Store, conceding that locating the event giving rise to damage for digital sales necessitates a ‘fiction of localisation’ (para. 59). Since Apple actively segments its market by country (via the App Store NL) and contractually links users to their residence (para. 57), the Advocate General proposed that sales could be fictionally deemed to occur at the user’s domicile (para. 72). This interpretation essentially endorsed a forum actoris, justified by Apple’s strategy of targeting the consumer’s place of residence (para. 74). As regards the place where the damage occurred, which he saw as less problematic, he also proposed to use the user’s domicile (para. 85). However, the Advocate General vehemently rejected the notion that the existence of a ‘virtual market’ renders every court in the Netherlands competent. He argued that treating all courts within a Member State as interchangeable contradicts the very purpose of Article 7(2), which is to identify a specific court with a close geographical link to the dispute (para. 66). A central pillar of his reasoning was the irrelevance of the representative nature of the action to this jurisdictional test. He maintained that the harmful event remains identical whether the claim is brought by an individual or a representative entity (para. 92–95). Consequently, the jurisdictional analysis must remain anchored to the individual circumstances of the represented users (para. 103). The Advocate General explicitly acknowledged that this interpretation leads to territorial fragmentation, potentially requiring foundations to file claims in all eleven Dutch district courts (para. 97–98). Yet, he insisted that procedural convenience for mass claims cannot override the structural logic of the Brussels 1 bis Regulation (para. 99). He concluded that the remedy for this inefficiency lies not in judicial creativity but in national procedural law, as long as it does not threaten the effectiveness of the Brussels 1 bis Regulation. Specifically, he pointed (very cautiously) to internal referral mechanisms, such as Article 220 of the Dutch Code of Civil Procedure, as the appropriate tool to achieve ex post concentration of proceedings without distorting EU jurisdictional rules (para. 133–141). The Grand Chamber, far from embracing the Advocate General’s caution, took a significantly bolder path, effectively establishing a ‘virtual space’ doctrine to secure jurisdictional centralisation. The Court acknowledged the distinct challenge posed by mass digital torts, noting that the traditional connecting factors used for material goods, like the place of physical purchase or the victim’s domicile (Volvo, C-30/20, ECLI:EU:C:2021:604), are ill-suited for a situation involving the purchase of digital content across an entire national territory by an indefinite number of natural and/or legal persons, who were unidentified at the time when the action was brought. The Court thus effectively recognized the need for an adaptation of the criterion of the place where the damage occurred in this case (para. 59–61). Crucially, the Court held that the App Store NL constitutes a ‘virtual space’ that corresponds to the entire territory of the Netherlands. This key finding was justified by Apple’s own design choices: the platform specifically targets the Dutch market, uses the Dutch language, is linked to Dutch Apple IDs and payment methods, and offers apps tailored for that country. Consequently, the damage, namely the economic loss resulting from the allegedly excessive commission, is deemed to occur throughout that entire territory simultaneously, ‘irrespective of the place where the users concerned were located at the time of the relevant purchase’ (para. 62). The Court further emphasized the specific nature of the representative action. The foundations were not acting as proxies for individuals (as in a traditional assignment of claims) but were exercising their own right to defend the collective interests of a ‘strictly defined group’. Requiring the court to identify the precise place of damage for each unidentified victim would be incompatible with the principles underlying collective redress with opt-out mechanisms (para. 64–66). The risk of jurisdictional fragmentation, resulting in parallel proceedings with divergent outcomes across various domestic courts, was considered contrary to the objectives of the Brussels I bis Regulation, namely the sound administration of justice and the avoidance of conflicts of jurisdiction (para. 70–73). In view of the factual and economic complexity of private competition law enforcement, the Court decided that Article 7(2) of Brussels 1 bis does not preclude the application of national rules aimed at ensuring centralisation of jurisdiction, in particular where representative actions are brought by qualified entities before several national courts (para 74–75). Therefore, the Court concluded that any court with substantive jurisdiction in the Member State to hear such a representative action has both international and territorial jurisdiction to hear the action in its entirety. While the judgment provides a pragmatic solution for digital mass claims, it may invite criticism for its doctrinal creativity and potential long-term side effects. The Court’s construction of a ‘virtual space’ doctrine, which relies on a ‘fiction of localisation’ to equate a digital storefront with a national territory, was a bold move. Critics may argue that this approach stretches Article 7(2) Brussels I bis beyond its strict interpretation, a concern echoed by the Advocate General who warned against such judicial innovation without legislative backing (see on this line eg Van Calster, ‘The CJEU does not follow its AG in “Apple App store”. Stretches the statutory provisions of Brussels Ia to support collective action under the Dutch WAMCA’, GAVC Law Blog, 3 December 2025). Furthermore, by authorizing any court with substantive competence to hear the entirety of the claim, the ruling potentially encourages claimants to select courts based on strategic advantage rather than expertise, creating friction within national judicial systems (see on this line eg Hess, ‘The CJEU Acting as a Lawmaker: Article 7(2) of the Brussels I bis Regulation as a New Forum Actoris for Collective Actions’, EAPL blog, 3 December 2025). Even so, the judgment in Stichting v Apple is a welcome step forward for the private enforcement of EU competition law in the digital era (on that same line, see eg Souza Ferro, ‘Collective Redress Trumps Brussels Regulation Formalism’, EU Law Live, 15 December 2025). The ruling shows the Court’s willingness to avoid intra-state fragmentation and interpret Article 7(2) for mass digital claims in a way that preserves its effectiveness. Had the Court followed the strict logic of Volvo and applied it to digital users, the necessity to file claims in eleven different Dutch districts would have rendered the WAMCA regime practically inoperative for nationwide digital harms. By equating the virtual market with the national territory, the Court has concretely and effectively allowed claimants to anchor jurisdiction in any substantively competent court. The Court thereby adopted a decidedly claimant-friendly approach, arguably preparing the ground for future private enforcement actions under the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act. The judgment suggests that where a platform targets a Member State as a whole, it exposes itself to the jurisdiction of any competent court in that State for the entirety of the mass harm. This virtual space doctrine simplifies the jurisdictional hurdle significantly, shifting the focus from the physical location of the user to the commercial design of the platform. While the judgment solves the immediate problem for single country markets like the App Store NL, it leaves open the question of pan-European claims. The Court’s reasoning relies heavily on the national segmentation of the Apple’s platform. It remains to be seen whether this virtual space reasoning can be stretched to cross-border mass claims where a platform treats the EU as a single market, or whether claimants will still be bound by the national borders of the ‘affected market’ logic. Even so, this step towards centralization is critical for the efficiency of complex antitrust and digital litigation, which requires the pooling of evidence and deep economic analysis.
Author: Adrien de Hauteclocque
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,850
OpenAlex ID: W7147379026
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