Facebook has reportedly received a “revised” preliminary decision from the EU’s main privacy watchdog that could affect its transfer of EU user data to the US. “Meta has 28 days to submit comments on this preliminary decision, at which point we will prepare a draft Article 60 for other relevant regulators, which is expected to take place in April.” Irish Data Protection Commissioner (IDPC) Deputy Commissioner Gray Graham Doyle said.
Doller declined to give details of the preliminary decision. But as early as September 2020, the IDPC sent a preliminary order asking Facebook to suspend data transfers to the United States, according to people familiar with the matter.
Meta has been stressing on investor conference calls that the company’s model of sending data from Europe back to the U.S. is at risk. Meta challenged the interim ban before the IDCP. But the Irish High Court in May last year rejected Meta’s appeal, closing the road.
It is unclear whether the facts of the case have changed substantially, depending on the wrestling between European data protection laws and U.S. surveillance forces.
In addition, other European data protection authorities have made decisions in recent months that have been very detrimental to services such as Google Analytics that need to transfer data back to the United States. At least on the surface, this increases the probability that IDPC will ultimately make an unfavorable decision against Meta.
It is still difficult to judge how long this data transmission turmoil that has lasted for many years will continue. But now it seems likely that the dust will settle in a few months rather than a few more years.
A spokesperson for Meta said: “This is not final and the IDPC is requesting further legal filings. Stopping data transfers will not only harm the interests of the millions of European individuals, charities and businesses who use our services, it will also harm the thousands of other European and American data transfer companies that provide global services that have an impact. Long-term solutions for European and American data transfers are needed to keep individuals, businesses and economies connected.”
There’s another matter closely tied to the matter – the European Commission and the US are negotiating alternatives to the defunct Privacy Shield data transfer arrangements. Meta and Google have been publicly calling for a transatlantic data transfer agreement in recent months to resolve the legal uncertainty facing U.S. cloud computing services.
But the European Commission has previously warned that this time will not be “quickly resolved” – they said back in 2020 that unless all the issues raised by the European Court of Justice when it ruled the Privacy Shield invalid in July were resolved Alternatives may be reached.
From this point of view, it is difficult for Europe and the United States to reach a new data transmission agreement in the short term.