The EU Court fined the European Commission for violating its own law — a first in history

The General Court of the European Union has ordered the European Commission to compensate a German citizen for failing to comply with its own data protection rules.

This is stated in the court decision of January 8.

A Munich resident visited the EU website several times in 2021-2022. There, he used the "Log in with Facebook" feature to register for a conference. After logging in, the man noticed an increase in connections to third-party providers.

The court ultimately found that the transfer of a Meta Platforms userʼs IP address to the US violated EU data protection rules. The point is that the EC transferred the manʼs personal data to the States without adequate safeguards. Now the executive body must compensate Brussels for damages in the amount of €400.

The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is considered one of the strictest and most comprehensive privacy laws in the world, with major companies such as Klarna, Meta and LinkedIn paying hefty fines for non-compliance, Reuters reports.

• Meta, like other American tech companies, collects data from the EU and sends it to the US, where its main data centers are located.
• In December 2024, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Meta €251 million for failing to comply with the EU data privacy regulation.
• In September, the European Unionʼs privacy regulator fined social media company Meta $101.5 million for inadvertently storing some usersʼ passwords without encryption.

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