This is the third fine imposed on Meta by the EU this year. (representative)
Dublin, Ireland:
Facebook owner Meta has been fined a record 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) for transferring EU user data to the United States in violation of an earlier court ruling, the Irish regulator announced on Monday.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), acting on behalf of the European Union, said the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) had ordered it to collect “an administrative fine of €1.2 billion”.
The DPC has been investigating the transfer of personal data by Meta Ireland from the EU to the United States since 2020.
It ruled that Meta, which has its European headquarters in Dublin, has failed to “address the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms of data subjects”, as stated in an earlier ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union ( CJEU).
The CJEU interprets EU law to ensure that it is applied in the same way in all Member States.
In response, Meta said it was “disappointed to be selected” and the ruling was “flawed, unjustified and sets a dangerous precedent for the countless other companies.”
“We intend to appeal both the substance of the decision and the orders, including the fine, and will seek a stay through the courts to break implementation deadlines,” said Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg and chief legal officer Jennifer Newstead in a blog post.
“There is no immediate disruption from Facebook in Europe,” they added.
Fourth fine
Initially, the DPC had wanted to force Meta to suspend the offending data transfers, saying a fine would “exceed the scope of powers that can be described as ‘appropriate, proportionate and necessary'”.
But her fellow regulators in the EU, known as Concerned Supervisory Authorities (CSAs), disagreed.
“All four CSAs believed that Meta Ireland should be given an administrative fine,” the DPC said.
With no hope of consensus, the DPC referred the objections to the EDPB, which ruled that Meta Ireland suspends future transfers of personal data to the United States and pays a fine.
In a blog post, Clegg and Newstead said the EDPB’s decision to overrule the DPC “raises serious questions”.
“No country has done more than the US to adapt to European rules through their latest reforms, while transfers to countries like China continue largely unchallenged,” they added.
EU regulators have already hit Meta with fines of hundreds of millions of euros for data breaches through its Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook services.
It is the third fine imposed on Meta in the EU so far this year, and the fourth in six months.
In 2021, Amazon was fined €746 million in Luxembourg for violating the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
