The European Union (EU) delivered Meta a $1.3 billion privacy fine on Monday for reportedly transferring user data across the Atlantic, between Europe and the US. The EU has now ordered Meta to cease all data transfer between the two continents by October, per the Associated Press.
The steep financial penalty is the largest in Europe since the EU implemented its strict privacy operation just five years ago. The fine that Meta will have to pay comes after Amazon, in 2021, was forced to pay an $850.6 million fine for violating data protection rules.
Meta apparently believed that the fine was unfair. “This decision is flawed, unjustified and sets a dangerous precedent for the countless other companies transferring data between the EU and US,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global and affairs, and Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Newstead said in a statement.
The recent penalty was announced by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission after regulators noted that the company had failed to respect the 2020 decision by the EU’s highest court that European data that was transferred across the Atlantic was not adequately protected from US spy agencies, per the New York Times.
The ruling reportedly only applies to Facebook, not Instagram and WhatsApp, though the three platforms are owned by the same company. While Meta has five months to stop what they are doing, the company’s appeal could set up a potentially lengthy legal process.
However, the EU and American officials have apparently tried negotiating a new pact that would allow the company to continue moving information from one continent to the other. The Times reported that a preliminary deal was announced in 2022.
The battle over where Meta’s Facebook keeps its data has been part of a decades-long dispute, kicked off after Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems brought up a legal challenge over the possibility that the US was snooping, amid the revelations made by the former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
