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Record fine for Meta in the EU for not complying with privacy regulations: 1,200 million

Although for several days it was speculated that the Irish Data Protection Commission was going to impose a record fine on Meta for not complying with data privacy regulations in the European Union, confirmation of how much it would finally amount to was missing. . And the decision is already known: Meta will have to pay a fine of 1,200 million euros. Is the highest sanction imposed so far in the EU for violating the GDPRsurpassing the $746 million imposed on Amazon by Luxembourg.

The Commission has found that Meta violated the GDPR when it sent large amounts of personal data of European Facebook users to the United States without sufficiently protecting them from Washington’s data surveillance practices.

According to the Irish privacy regulator, Meta’s use of a legal instrument known as standard contractual clauses (SCCs) to move data to the United States “does not address the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms” of European users. of Facebook, according to a fundamental rule of the Supreme Court of the EU.

The European Court of Justice ended in 2020 with an agreement that established the flow of data between the European Union and the United States, which was known as the Privacy Shield, due to distrust of the surveillance practices of the American intelligence services. In the same verdict, the EU’s High Court of Justice also tightened the requirements for the use of the aforementioned SSCs, a legal tool widely used by companies for the transfer of personal data to the United States.

But then Meta, among other international companies, continued to rely on this legal instrument, as European and US officials began to struggle to get a new data flow agreement in place. It also did so because the company had no other legal mechanisms for transferring personal data.

Currently, the US and the EU are finalizing a new agreement on the flow of data, which could be approved between July and October of this year. Meta has until October 12 to stop using the SSCs for its transfers. The deal is therefore likely to be approved before then, something that will also prevent Meta from following through on its threat to shut down Facebook and Instagram in Europe if there is no proper new data flow deal in place.

In addition to the sanction, and the deadline to stop using the SSCs to transport data, Meta has until November 12 to return to the EU the personal data of European Facebook users transferred and stored in the United States since 2020. , and until a new agreement is reached between the European Union and the US.

But interestingly, the Irish Data Protection Commission has also stated that does not agree with the fine that has been imposed on Meta or with its amountbut what has been forced to do so by the pan-European network of national regulatorsthe European Data Protection Board (EDPB), after Dublin’s initial decision was challenged by four of its European regulatory counterparts.

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