European Commission hit by EU court fine after breaking own data privacy rules
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European Commission violates own laws, pays the price. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. The European Commission has been forced to pay a 400 euro ($412) fine to a German citizen for breaking its own data protection regulations.
![[Benedict Collins]](https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg)
The German citizen used a “Sign in with Facebook” option on an EU conference registration page which subsequently sent information on the citizens’ IP address, web browser, and device to Meta Platforms and Amazon in the US. The EU General Court concluded the European Commission had transferred personal data to the United States without proper safeguards, violating the EU’s stringent General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
"The Commission takes note of the judgment and will carefully study the Court's judgment and its implications," a Commission spokesperson said (via Reuters). The European Union has some of the strongest privacy protections in the world, with GDPR imposing rules on any organization that collects or manages personal data of EU citizens, with the ability to fine the organization up to 4% of their annual turnover in the event that they breach the regulations.
In 2024, Meta was hit by a $263 million fine for breaching GDPR in the 2018 Facebook data breach when the data on three million EU citizens was stolen by attackers who abused a bug in the “View as” profile function to steal access tokens and take over accounts.
