Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta was directed to pay a whopping 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) in fine by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) Monday, finding it liable for violating previous court rulings regarding the data transfer of European users to the US.
The DPC has been investigating the matter since 2020.
The European Union’s (EU) privacy regulator also granted Meta five months to cease the data transfers to the US.
The DPC said the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) had ordered it to collect “an administrative fine in the amount of 1.2 billion euros”.
The US-EU data transfer pact was invalidated in 2020 and Meta continued the transfers beyond the invalidation of the agreement.
The fine imposed by DPC on Meta surpassed the previous 746 million euro record EU privacy fine by Luxembourg on Amazon in 2021.
Meta said that it will appeal the ruling, including the “unjustified and unnecessary fine that “sets a dangerous precedent for countless other companies.” It will also seek a stay of the suspension orders through the courts.
“We intend to appeal both the decision’s substance and its orders including the fine, and will seek a stay through the courts to pause the implementation deadlines,” Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg and chief legal officer Jennifer Newstead said in a blog post.
