Meta has been fined a record 1.2 billion euros (almost $1.3 billion) for breaking European Union privacy standards.
According to an inquiry conducted by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), Meta, which owns Facebook, continues to transfer user data from nations in the European Union and the European Economic Area to the United States despite being barred from doing so in 2021.
The European Data Protection Board’s extraordinary punishment, issued on Monday, is meant to send a clear signal to organizations “that serious infringements have far-reaching consequences,” said the regulator’s chair, Andrea Jelinek, in a statement.
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Meta, a company that owns WhatsApp and Instagram, intends to appeal the verdict and seek a stay of proceedings.
In a statement, President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg and Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Newstead said, “This decision is flawed and unjustified, and sets an unsafe example for the many other companies transferring data between the EU and the US.”
The struggle between Meta and EU courts over privacy began when an Austrian privacy campaigner won a decade-long case to annul a US-EU data-sharing agreement.
That arrangement, known as Privacy Shield, enables Facebook and other corporations to transmit data between the two areas. It was overturned in 2020.
The DPC has also ordered Meta to cease all further data transfers within five months and to make compliant all European data presently held in the United States within six months. This includes photographs, friend connections, direct messaging, and data gathered for targeted advertising.
The United States and the European Union are presently discussing a new data-moving agreement known as the Data Privacy Framework, which is due to be completed this summer. If the agreement is signed before the DPC’s deadlines, “services can continue as they do presently without any disruption or impact on users,” Meta said in a statement.
The amount levied by DPC on Meta is the highest imposed by a European authority on a technology business since the EU fined Amazon 746 million euros in 2021.
According to the European Court of Justice, the possibility of US eavesdropping infringes the basic rights of European users. Furthermore, officials claim Meta has failed to adequately secure data from American surveillance agencies and advertising.
According to Meta, there is presently no interruption to Facebook in Europe.
