In February (most likely February 23), the European Union will publish the Data Law, which will impose an obligation on cloud service providers and data processing services to put in place safeguards against illegal transfer of data to governments outside the European Union. The point is to protect the data of European Internet users (or at least that eurozone governments should govern the data of their citizens).

It didn’t take long for a reaction to occur. In its annual report, Meta stated that if it was not given the option to transfer, store and process the data of its European users on servers in the United States, Facebook and Instagram could be shut down across Europe.

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The main issue with Meta is data transfers across the Atlantic, regulated by the so-called Privacy Shield and other model agreements that Meta uses or has used to store European user data on US servers. Existing data transfer agreements are now tightly controlled in the European Union.

In its annual report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Meta warns that if the new framework is not adopted and the company is no longer able to benefit from its existing “or alternative” international agreements, the company “likely will not be able to provide many” Its most important products and services” in the European Union, including Facebook and Instagram

As pointed out by Meta, the exchange of data between countries and regions is critical for the delivery of services and the delivery of targeted advertising.

Therefore, it has previously used the Transatlantic Data Transfer Framework – the aforementioned Privacy Shield – as a legal basis for carrying out such data transfers. However, this treaty was annulled by the European Court of Justice in July 2020 due to data protection violations (the so-called Schrems ruling II). Since then, the European Union and the United States have confirmed that they are working on a new or updated version of the treaty.

In addition to the Privacy Shield, Meta also uses so-called model contracts, that is, standard contractual clauses, as the primary legal basis for processing European users’ data on US servers.

Facebook recently experienced a decline in the number of users for the first time in history, and Mark Zuckerberg came out of the list of the ten richest people in the world. However, you see, he was not afraid of losing hundreds of millions of European Internet users.

المصدر: iTWire، The Guardian، Side Line Magazine، City AM

Read also: European countries imposed a record 1.1 billion euros in penalties for breaching the GDPR in 2021