Dec 15
Danish DPA Data Protection Digital Markets Act EU-US cooperation EDPB hits Meta, the EU General Court explains the nature

EDPB hits Meta, the EU General Court explains the nature of the EDPB’s decisions.

DP News – Week 50. EDPB hits Meta, the EU General Court explains the nature of the EDPB’s decisions.

As DPOrganizer reported last week, it became known on 06 December that the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) adopted binding decisions against Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp (all owned by Meta).

As the EDPB confirms in its press-release, the decision “settles, among others, the question of whether or not the processing of personal data for the performance of a contract is a suitable legal basis for behavioural advertising, in the cases of Facebook and Instagram, and for service improvement, in the case of WhatsApp”.

As a matter of background, the DPC (the Irish supervisory authority (SA)) initially issued three draft decisions in respect of three mentioned platforms. In turn, some other supervisory authorities, as summarised by the EDPB, “issued objections on the draft decisions prepared by the Irish SA concerning, among others, the legal basis for processing (Art. 6 GDPR), data protection principles (Art. 5 GDPR), and the use of corrective measures including fines. As no consensus was reached on these objections, the EDPB was called upon to settle the dispute between the SAs within two months”.

Finally, it became known that the EDPB ruled that personalised ads run through Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are illegal due to the lack of users’ consent, while Meta cannot require users to accept personalised ads through their terms.

More details will follow later: as the EBPD explains, the Irish SA “shall adopt its three final decisions, addressed to the controller, on the basis of the EDPB binding decisions, taking into account the EDPB’s legal assessment, at the latest one month after the EDPB has notified its decisions”.

Interestingly, according to the Order of the EU General Court (case T-709/21) concerning WhatsApp Ireland Ltd., the court set forth that the EDPB’s decision is “specific to WhatsApp, even though it includes, as is very common in individual acts, a statement or reiteration of principles and interpretations of a general nature”. Having said that, the General Court stipulated that “[u]nlike the final decision of the Irish supervisory authority, the decision is not directly enforceable against WhatsApp” as it serves as one of those so-called “intermediate acts whose purpose is to prepare for the final decision”.

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