The European Union fined Meta $1.3 cardinal connected Monday saying Facebook’s genitor institution broke the bloc’s laws by transferring E.U. citizens’ idiosyncratic information to the United States. The Irish Data Protection Commission, which handed down the order, said the transfers violated the E.U.’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Meta’s European office are successful Dublin.

Dig deeper: ChatGPT nether menace from European regulators

This is the largest GDPR good ever handed down, surpassing the erstwhile grounds of $887 cardinal against Amazon successful 2021. The ruling gives Meta 5 months to enactment successful spot measures to halt aboriginal transfers of idiosyncratic information to the United States and six months to halt “the unlawful processing, including storage, successful the US of idiosyncratic information of EU/EEA users transferred successful usurpation of the GDPR.”

Why we care. If the ruling is enactment successful spot Facebook would person to delete a immense magnitude of information and restructure its IT systems astatine a precise cardinal level. It besides would person tremendous implications for immoderate institution transferring information betwixt the 2 areas.

The champion anticipation for staying the ruling is simply a caller information transportation pact betwixt the U.S. and E.U.

Until 2020, these transfers were protected by the Privacy Shield pact betwixt the 2 governments. That twelvemonth the E.U.’s highest tribunal invalidated the pact by ruling it did not sufficiently support E.U. citizens’ information from American spy agencies. 

Negotiations person been underway since the precocious court’s ruling. Last year, President Biden and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union, announced the outlines of a deal, but the details are inactive being hammered out. No uncertainty Monday’s determination volition summation the unit connected the U.S. to get it done. However, the complexity of the issues makes it hard to determination quickly.

Only Facebook. The determination applies lone to Facebook and not different Meta-owned platforms specified arsenic Instagram and WhatsApp.

The institution said it plans to appeal.

“This determination is flawed, unjustified and sets a unsafe precedent for the countless different companies transferring information betwixt the EU and U.S.,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of planetary affairs, and Jennifer Newstead, its main ineligible officer, said successful a statement.