Europe to Meta/Facebook: “You want to leave? Fine. Leave.”
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Privacy, Technology and Perspective
Europe to Meta/Facebook: “You want to leave? Fine. Leave.” Recently, cross-border data transfers under Chapter V of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation of 2018 (GDPR) made headlines as Meta/Facebook (FB) rankled authorities in authorities in Europe by warning in its most recent 10k of a material and adverse impact to its business, financial condition, and results of its operations “[i]f a new transatlantic data transfer framework is not adopted and we are unable to continue to rely on [the Standard Contractual Clauses] or rely upon other alternative means of data transfers from Europe to the United States…” You can read Meta/Facebook’s filing by clicking on the following link:
For background on the issues surrounding cross-border transfers of personal data from Europe to the U.S., you can also click on the following links to some of our previous posts on the subject:
https://www.hoschmorris.com/privacy-plus-news/a-new-way-to-move-data-from-the-eu-to-the-us
Bloomberg News, CNBC, Fox Business, and many other news outlets immediately interpreted the contents of as a bald, public threat from Meta/Facebook that it would leave Europe altogether. Reaction at the highest levels of both the German and French governments was immediate, definitive, aimed directly into Meta/Facebook’s eyes, and icy-cold. Paraphrased, it was: “You want to leave? Fine. Leave.”
Said Germany’s new economy minister: “After I was hacked I have lived without Facebook and Twitter for four years and life has been fantastic.”
Sitting beside him, the Finance Minister of France added, “I can confirm that life would be very good without Facebook and that we would live very well without Facebook.”
You can read more about their reactions here:
Meta/Facebook has also responded, stating that it is “absolutely not threatening to leave Europe,” and explaining that it’s just the continuing “uncertainty [of what rules will apply]” (emphases added) that’s making things so difficult for Meta/Facebook and the rest of the market. A link to that response follows:
https://about.fb.com/news/2022/02/meta-is-absolutely-not-threatening-to-leave-europe/
What will be the outcome of this eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation is uncertain. But authorities in Europe so far seem unpersuaded that the GDPR is the problem. And we hardly suppose that Meta/Facebook will reconcile itself anytime soon with a revelation accompanied by prompt, absolute “certainty” that its business model must be reconstructed from the ground up.
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Hosch & Morris, PLLC is a boutique law firm dedicated to data privacy and protection, cybersecurity, the Internet and technology. Open the Future℠.