EU slaps Facebook owner Meta with record €1.2bn fine
FACEBOOK owner Meta has been fined a record €1.2 billion (R24.94bn) for transferring EU user data to the US in breach of a previous court ruling, Ireland’s regulator said yesterday.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), which acts on behalf of the EU, said the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) had ordered it to collect “an administrative fine in the amount of €1.2bn”. The DPC has been investigating Meta Ireland’s transfer of personal data from the EU to the US since 2020.
It found that Meta, which has its European headquarters in Dublin, failed to “address the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms of data subjects” that were identified in a previous ruling by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). The CJEU interprets EU law to make sure it is applied in the same way in all member states.
In response, Meta said it was “disappointed to have been singled out” and the ruling was “flawed, unjustified and sets a dangerous precedent for the countless other companies”.
“We intend to appeal both the decision’s substance and its orders including the fine, and will seek a stay through the courts to pause the implementation deadlines,” Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg and chief legal officer Jennifer Newstead said in a blog post. “There is no immediate disruption to Facebook in Europe,” they added.
Meta said it hopes to see the US and EU adopt a new legal framework for the use of personal data in the coming months after an agreement in principle last year, which could allow it to continue its data transfer practices.
EU regulators have hit Meta with four fines in six months, and three this year, over data breaches by its Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook services.
In January, the DPC fined the social media giant €390 million for breaking data rules in its use of targeted advertising on its apps. In March, Meta was made to pay €5.5m for breaching the GDPR with its WhatsApp service.
In the latest case, the DPC had initially wanted to force Meta to suspend the offending data transfers, saying that a fine “would exceed the extent of powers that could be described as being ‘appropriate, proportionate and necessary’”. But its peer regulators in the EU, known as Concerned Supervisory
Authorities, disagreed and said it should be “subject to an administrative fine”, the DPC said.
With no hope of consensus, the Irish body referred the objections to the EDPB, which ruled that Meta Ireland must suspend future transfer of personal data to the US and pay a fine.
Clegg and Newstead said the decision to overrule the DPC “raises serious questions”. “No country has done more than the US to align with European rules via their latest reforms, while transfers continue largely unchallenged to countries such as China,” they added.
But EDPB chairperson Andrea Jelinek characterised Meta’s infringement as “very serious” and called its data transfers “systematic, repetitive and continuous”.