Due to the transfer of user data from the European Union (EU) to the United States (US), Meta has been assessed a record-breaking fine of 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) by European privacy regulators.
The Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems brought the lawsuit, arguing that the current system for sending data about EU citizens to the US was insufficient to shield Europeans from US surveillance. Max Schrems’ case resulted in the decision.
The methods used to transfer personal data between the US and the EU have been the subject of various legal issues. In 2020, the European Court of Justice—the highest court in the EU—ruled that the most recent agreement, known as Privacy Shield, was illegal.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is enforced by the Irish Data Protection Commission, has been alleged to have been broken by Meta. Meta carried on sending the personal data of EU individuals to the US despite the European court’s 2020 decision. A substantial data protection law known as GDPR has been in place since 2018 and regulates businesses doing business in the EU.
To enable the transfer of personal data between the EU and the US, Meta used a method known as standard contractual clauses. No EU court had previously barred this practise.
The Irish data regulator, however, asserted that these provisions, coupled with additional restrictions put in place by Meta and the European Commission, did not effectively address the threats to data subjects’ fundamental rights and freedoms as underlined by the European Court of Justice.
Additionally, the Irish Data Protection Commission gave Meta a five-month window after the ruling to stop sending any more personal data to the US.
The 1.2 billion euro fine levied against Meta is the highest fine ever assessed for violating GDPR. Prior to this, e-commerce behemoth Amazon had received the largest penalties of 746 million euros for GDPR violations in 2021.
The ruling and the fine will be appealed, according to Meta. In a blog post published on Monday, Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, and chief legal officer, Jennifer Newstead, said they would ask the courts to halt the deadlines for implementation due to the potential harm the orders could cause, particularly to the millions of Facebook users.
The efforts of the EU and Washington to build a new data transmission mechanism have once again received attention as a result of the Meta case. A new framework for cross-border data transfers was reached by the US and EU last year, but it has not yet taken effect.
