Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has been hit with a record-breaking fine of €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) for unlawfully transferring user data from the EU to the US.
The European Data Protection Board ordered the DPC to collect the administrative fine due to Meta’s failure to address the risks to data subjects’ fundamental rights and freedoms, as previously ruled by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
Meta intends to appeal the penalty, calling it unjustified and unnecessary, while seeking a suspension of the banning orders. The company argues that such measures would harm the millions of people who rely on Facebook daily.
The ruling comes in the wake of the invalidation of the Privacy Shield agreement, which governed EU-US data transfers, by the CJEU in 2020.
It was confirmed that another tool used for data transfers, stock legal contracts, was also deemed invalid. In response, the EU has been negotiating a new data transfer pact with the US, and the European Commission expects to finalize the framework by the summer.
Meanwhile, Meta has been given a deadline to cease transferring users’ data to the US and to halt any unlawful processing and storage of EU personal data in the US.
The fine imposed on Meta coincides with the fifth anniversary of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), considered a global benchmark for privacy protection. Since 2018, EU regulators have had the authority to impose fines of up to 4% of a company’s annual revenue for severe offenses.
The Irish Data Protection Commission, as the lead privacy regulator for major tech firms with an EU base in Ireland, including Meta and Apple, has already fined Meta multiple times and currently has 10 ongoing inquiries into the company’s platforms.
In January, Meta was fined 390 million euros for breaching data rules in targeted advertising on its apps, and in March, it was ordered to pay 5.5 million euros for GDPR violations related to its WhatsApp messaging service. This recent fine surpasses the previous record of €746 million imposed on Amazon.
