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The case pertains to the transfer of an EU citizen’s information to the US.
In a first, the EU General Court has today (8 January) sided against the European Commission and issued a fine, for the organisation’s failure to align with its own data protection regulations.
The case was brought to the EU General Court by a German citizen who, in 2021 and 2022, visited the website of the Conference on the Future of Europe, which is run by the Commission and where he says his data protection rights were infringed upon.
The court agreed with the unnamed man that, when he logged on to the event via the Commission’s EU Login authentication service and selected the option of signing in using his Facebook account, that it was a violation of his data protection rights to then have that data transferred to the US.
According to the statement issued by the Court of Justice of the European Union, the man in question explained that when he accessed the website, personal data including his IP address and information about his browser and terminal were made available to recipients based in the US.
He told the court that the US does not offer an adequate level of protection, thereby increasing the risk of his private information being accessed by the US security and intelligence services and that there were no appropriate safeguards that might justify the transfer of that information.
By creating the conditions under which data could be transferred to the US, the court found in favour of the citizen, granting him €400 in compensation. However, requests to have the transfer of his personal data annulled and the compensation of an additional €800 for non-material damage were both dismissed.
According to the statement, the General Court ruled “that the Commission committed a sufficiently serious breach of a rule of law that is intended to confer rights on individuals”.
In September of last year, the European Court of Justice made another landmark decision, siding with the European Commission who alleged that Ireland had granted Apple “unlawful” aid in the form of tax advantages, ordering the tech giant to pay back €13bn in taxes.
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