To date there are “thousands of companies and organizations” that “depend on the ability to transfer data between the EU and the US and to provide services on a daily basis”, but there is a “conflict” between American rules and European privacy rights. To write it in a note on Meta’s blog I am the president of Global affairs by Meta Nick Clegg and the chief legal officer of the Jennifer Newstead group, announcing that the Californian giant will appeal against the “unjustified” 1.2 billion fine imposed by Brussels on the company. At the moment, Clegg and Newstead underline, there is no “immediate destruction” of Facebook in Europe, but the sanction risks “fragmenting” the Internet.
Meta: you risk fragmenting the Internet
The EU sanction is part of the open front between the EU leaders and the giant founded by Mark Zuckerberg, known as Facebook before rebranding coincided with investments in the so-called metaverse. Clegg and Newstead dispute the investigation and the fine arriving from Brussels, highlighting the risks that would be created for the Community economy itself. “Without the ability to transfer data across borders, the Internet risks being torn apart into national and regional silos, shrinking the global economy and leaving citizens of different countries without access to many of the shared assets we rely on.”
That is why, Clegg and Newstead argue, building a “solid legal basis for EU-US data transfers” has been a “political priority on both sides of the Atlantic for many years”. In a period of autocratic pressure on the Web, the note continues, democracies should “work together to promote and defend the idea of the open Internet. No country has done more than the US to align itself with European rules with its latest reforms, while the transfer of data continues undisturbed to countries like China”.
The news of the maxi-fine, however, does not seem to affect the trend of the Meta titlewhich on Wall Street is sharply up on Monday.
