American social media giant Meta was fined $1.2 billion on Monday for violating European data protection regulationsin the highest sanction imposed in Europe for this type of offence.

Meta, who plans to appeal the decision, was convicted “continued to transfer personal data” of Facebook users from the European Economic Area to the United Statesexplains the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC).

It supervises the application of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on behalf of the European Union, because the European headquarters of the American group is located in Ireland. The decision also requires Meta to “suspend all transfers of personal data to the United States within five months.” of being notified of the decision and complying with the GDPR within six months, the DPC added.

This fine, the highest ever imposed by a data protection regulator in Europe, is the result of an investigation launched in 2020. But Meta describes it as “unjustified and unnecessary” and will take legal action to try to suspend it, the social media giant responded in a statement sent to AFP on Monday.

“Thousands of companies and organizations depend on the ability to transfer data between the EU and the United States” and “there is a fundamental legal conflict between the US government’s rules on access to data and European privacy rights,” continued the giant.

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.

“American Surveillance”

It is a “hard blow to Meta”, the European association for the defense of privacy Noyb said in a statement (for “none of your business”, none of your business), which has filed numerous lawsuits against US tech giants in Europe.

“Since Edward Snowden’s revelations about the support of major US technology companies for the NSA (American National Security Agency) mass surveillance apparatus, Facebook -now Meta- has been the subject of a lawsuit in Ireland”, he emphasized.

Snowden, 39, is a Russian-born former U.S. intelligence adviser who leaked top-secret information in 2013 about the use of information by the NSA, for whom he worked.

This is the third sanction against Meta in the EU since early 2023 and the fourth in six months. In January, the DPC imposed a fine of almost 400 million euros for violations of the use of personal data for advertising purposes in its Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp applications. And in March he was fined 5.5 million euros for violating the GDPR with his messaging service WhatsApp.

Since, Meta has committed to amending its terms of use in Europe in order to continue to collect and process the personal data of its European users.

These sanctions come in a context of tightened controls and judicial processes in the European Union, but also in the United States, against the technology giants known as GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple), and the measures that have recently been taken against the Chinese giant TikTok.

In 2021, Amazon was fined 746 million euros in Luxembourg for violating the GDPR.