Facebook owner Meta fined €1.2bn over EU privacy rule breach

Record penalty for flouting data protection laws
Katie Prescott
, Technology Business Editor
The Times
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and chief executive, with Sir Nick Clegg, right, president of global affairs, who has said the company will appeal
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and chief executive, with Sir Nick Clegg, right, president of global affairs, who has said the company will appeal
NIALL CARSON/PA
Katie Prescott
, Technology Business Editor
The Times

Meta, the owner of Facebook, has been fined a record €1.2 billion for breaching European Union data privacy rules, and given a six-month deadline to stop transferring data to the United States.

The Irish Data Protection Commission said Meta had violated the EU’s rules when it moved the personal data of European Facebook users to the US, where it is hosted, without protecting them sufficiently from Washington’s data surveillance practices.

The fine is the biggest issued for a breach of EU general data protection regulation rules, beating the €746 million levied on Amazon in 2021.

The commission said the European Data Protection Board had ordered it to collect the fine. Andrea Jelinek, chairwoman of the board, said it “concerns transfers that are systematic, repetitive and