Facebook voiced to Ireland’s High Court that it is not sure how it could operate its services in the European Union if the supervisors restrict its data transfer mechanism. The EU regulator of Facebook, the Irish Data Protection Commission had made an initial decision that the mechanism it utilizes to transport data to the United States from the EU cannot be used.

Facebook urged for and got a temporary restriction on the order and a court evaluation in the Irish High Court, which will consider the issue in November.

The associate general counsel and head of data protection of Facebook Ireland stated in an affidavit submitted to the court to appeal to halt the order, that the company is unsure of how it would deliver services in the EU if the Irish order is imposed. A High Court spokesman confirmed that the affidavit is not been made public yet.

Facebook earlier stated that it depended on the mechanism in question which is known as standard contractual clauses (SCCs) to transfer information to countries based out of the EU and the restrictions will have a huge impact on the businesses that depends on SCCs.

After the ruling by the Court of Justice of the EU on when the SCCs can be utilized legally, the Irish investigation started.

The ruling was to address the EU concerns that the investigation administration in the United States might not respect the EU citizens’ secrecy rights when their data is transferred to the US for commercial use.

Facebook’s Vice President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg stated that as the company seeks recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, the absence of safe, secure, and lawful international data transfer might harm the economy and hinder the growth of businesses that are data-driven in the EU. The impact would affect various large and small enterprises across various sectors.

Source: https://in.reuters.com/article/facebook-privacy/facebook-tells-irish-court-that-probe-threatens-its-eu-operations-newspaper-idINKCN26B0CX

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/technology/facebook-european-union-data-privacy.html