Meta Faces Record €1.2 Billion EU Privacy Fine

In May 2023, Ireland's Data Protection Commission issued Meta Platforms a record €1.2 billion fine — the largest penalty ever handed down under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation — for systematically transferring the personal data of European Facebook users to servers in the United States in violation of GDPR rules.

The ruling was rooted in the Schrems II decision by the European Court of Justice and required Meta to cease the unlawful transfers within six months. The case highlighted the enduring tension between US intelligence practices and European data protection standards, and signaled that regulators were prepared to impose substantial financial penalties on even the largest technology companies.

Europe's biggest privacy penalty now tests whether Brussels can still govern data crossing the Atlantic. Ireland's Data Protection Commission fined Meta 1.2 billion euros in May 2023, the largest GDPR penalty ever, for moving European Facebook users' data to American servers on standard contractual clauses European Data Protection Board. Meta won a stay and kept transferring under the replacement framework Brussels adopted on July 10, 2023; Luxembourg dismissed the French challenge to that deal on September 3, 2025. Then Washington moved: after the Supreme Court stripped the Federal Trade Commission of independence, noyb invoked the deal's 259 references to the agency and demanded withdrawal noyb. Watch the Commission choose between Washington's fury and Schrems' promised case.