Meta declined to comment on the Reuters report. The European Commission (EC) and the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) handled the request for suspension in exactly the same way. According to the sources Reuters But it is only a matter of time before the fine is officially announced.

The dispute over user data – or rather, where it is stored – erupted last year.

At the time, the company’s president, Mark Zuckerberg, threatened to take down Facebook and Instagram for Europeans in the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s detailed financial records.

“If the new framework is not adopted for transatlantic data transmission and we cannot continue to rely on standard contractual clauses or other alternative means to transmit data from Europe to the United States, we may not be able to offer many of our most important products and services in Europe, including In that Facebook and Instagram,” reads the report from Meta.

European regulatory authorities have long been opposed to sending user data outside the continent. In July 2020, the European Court of Justice declared invalid the agreement between the European Union and the United States, under which companies could transfer personal data of European users to the United States.

Sending data of European users to the USA is a violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), i.e. the rules for the protection of personal data. Of course, this applies not only to introduction platforms, but also to other companies that work with data of European users outside our continent.

European regulators, led by Irish Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon, are now trying to ensure user data is kept in Europe. They are concerned that this transmission mechanism could make the data available to US intelligence services.

Indeed, the European Union’s Supreme Court warned Meta in April that it had acted in violation of the law. The DPC was then given a month to issue an order to block the flow of Facebook data across the Atlantic.

However, the US company has not yet responded to the call, which is why it now faces a record fine, according to Reuters. This could even exceed the current record fine of 746 million euros (16.3 billion CZK), awarded to Amazon for transferring personal data in violation of its protection rules, known for short GDPR.