European Union regulators fined Facebook owner Meta a record $1.3 billion (€1.2 billion) for misusing user information and suspending data transfers from EU users to the US. The fine was handed down by the Irish Data Protection Commission, which regulates Facebook in the EU, after the social network’s data transfer to the US “did not address risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms” of EU users. Data Protection Regulation. Arrangement.

The fine is the largest ever imposed under the EU’s GDPR privacy law, and the previous €746 million fine imposed on Amazon in 2021 for similar privacy violations.

In addition to the fine, Meta was given five months to stop future transfers of personal data to the United States, and six months to stop “illegal processing, including storage in the United States,” of transferred personal data. The order does not apply to Instagram and WhatsApp, which is also owned by Meta.

The previous mechanism for the legal transfer of personal data between the US and the EU, known as the Privacy Shield pact, was overturned by the EU’s highest court in 2020. The Irish regulator claimed that Meta violated EU GDPR laws when it continued to transfer personal data to the US after 2020 despite a court order.

The issue has persisted for a decade after Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems filed a legal appeal against Facebook in 2013 over concerns stemming from Edward Snowden’s statements that EU users’ data was not adequately protected from US intelligence agencies as it crossed the Atlantic.

“This decision is flawed, unfair, and sets a dangerous precedent for the myriad companies that transfer data between the EU and the US,” said Nick Clegg, Facebook’s head of global affairs, in a blog post in response to the decision. “We will appeal the decision, including unnecessary and unnecessary fines, and we will ask the courts to stop the decision,” he said.

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