Meta receives record fine of 1.2 billion euros for violating rules in Europe – 05/22/2023 – Market

US social media giant Meta was fined 1.2 billion euros (nearly $1.3 billion) on Monday for violating European data protection rules, the highest penalty imposed in Europe for such violations.

Meta, which intends to appeal the decision, was condemned for having “continued to transfer personal data” of Facebook users from the European Economic Area to the United States, explained the DPC (Irish Data Protection Commission).

The DPC acts on behalf of the European Union, monitoring the application of the EU General Data Protection Regulation, because the European headquarters of the American group is in Ireland.

The decision also requires Meta to “suspend all transfers of personal data to the United States within five months” after being notified of the decision and comply with the regulation within six months.

The fine, the highest ever imposed by a data protection regulator in Europe, is the result of an investigation launched in 2020.

Meta claims that the sanction is “unjustified and unnecessary” and will go to court to try to suspend it, the social media giant responded in a statement sent to AFP.

“Thousands of businesses and organizations depend on the ability to transfer data between the EU and the United States” and “there is a fundamental US government legal conflict over access to European data and privacy rights,” big tech continued.

Meta expects the United States and the European Union to adopt a new legal framework for the transfer of personal data in the coming months, following an agreement in principle reached last year.

This is the third sanction of the Meta in the European Union since the beginning of 2023 and the fourth in six months.

In January, the company was fined almost 400 million euros by the DPC for violations in the use of personal data for advertising purposes on its Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp applications, and in March it was fined 5.5 million euros for violation of the GDPR with your WhatsApp messaging service.

Since then, Meta has committed to amending its terms of use in Europe to continue collecting and processing the personal data of European users.

The sanctions are part of a context of increased controls and judicial processes in the European Union, but also in the United States, against the technological giants known as GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple), and the measures recently taken against the Chinese TikTok .