Facebook owner Meta has been handed a record fine of €1.2 billion over EU-US data transfers

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Meta was hit with a €1.2bn fine by the EU and ordered to halt user data transfers to the US, in the biggest fine handed to a Big Tech company in the blockade over privacy breaches .

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, which oversees the General Data Protection Regulation, issued the fine on Monday for Halfsaying Facebook violated its rules requiring platforms to ensure data transfers from Europe to the US have adequate safeguards.

Instead, the DPC found that the platform’s EU-US data flows had relied on contractual clauses that “failed to address risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms” of users, despite an earlier ruling by the EU Court of Justice required better protection of personal information from invasive US surveillance programs.

The EU’s record-breaking privacy fine comes after the Luxembourg regulator imposed a €746 million fine on Amazon in 2021.

According to the DPC, Facebook’s European operation also has five months to “suspend any future transfers of personal data to the United States” and six months to cease processing, including storage, of any personal information of European citizens in the United States. States previously transferred in violation of the GDPR.

Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, said: “We are . . . disappointed to have been singled out using the same legal mechanism as thousands of other companies seeking to provide services in Europe”.

He added: “This decision is wrong, unjustified and sets a dangerous precedent for the countless other companies that transfer data between the EU and the US.”

Max Schrems, the privacy activist who has regularly challenged Big Tech groups in European courts, said: “The fine could have been much higher, given that the maximum fine is more than 4 billion euros. . . unless US surveillance laws are corrected, Meta will have to radically restructure its systems.

The fine comes as Meta, which has a market cap of $630 billion, is battling an advertising slump amid a broader economic slowdown, prompting CEO Mark Zuckerberg to conduct several rounds of layoffs and promise to offer an “effective year”.

It is the latest in a string of global fines by the social media giant for lax privacy protections, including a $5 billion fine imposed by the Federal Trade Commission in 2019 in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The Irish regulator has drawn criticism from privacy activists and other data watchdogs in the bloc for lacking the ambition to go after Big Tech companies by imposing fines deemed too small or not taking cases in the first place.

Officials in Ireland will likely point to this fine as the latest proof of proper enforcement of the rules.

Social media platforms have been in limbo since an EU court ruling in 2020 found that a previous EU-US Privacy Shield could not be invoked by companies seeking to comply with the GDPR, as it did not sufficiently protect users. user data from US surveillance.

Meta last year threatened to withdraw from the EU if Ireland’s data protection watchdog banned EU-US data flows, which would have severely hurt its business.

The company is expected to appeal the DPC’s decision, during which a new Transatlantic Privacy Shield could come into effect. In October 2022, US President Joe Biden signed an executive order detailing steps the White House will take to adhere to a new EU-US data privacy framework currently under negotiation.