Irish regulator has month to make order on EU-US Facebook data transfers

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Ireland’s data regulator has one month to make an order on blocking Facebook’s transatlantic data flows, European Union regulators said on Thursday.

EU regulators led by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) Helen Dixon have been finalising a ban on the legal tool used by Facebook to transfer European user data because of concerns U.S. intelligence agencies could access the information.

Dixon, who is lead regulator for Facebook parent Meta because its European headquarters are in Ireland, last month said the ban could be in place by mid-May.

The European Data Protection Board, made up of national regulators, said in a statement on Thursday that a binding decision had been made on the issue and that the Irish regulator must adopt it within a month “at the latest”.

While the statement did not say what the decision was, Dixon has said other regulators had not disputed her order to ban the data transfer mechanism.

Meta, which has warned an order to ban the mechanism it uses to transfer data from Europe to the United States could force it to suspend Facebook services in Europe, declined to comment on the statement.

Officials have said a new EU-U.S. data protection framework, which aims to offer EU citizens the same level of data protection as under European law, may be ready by July.

(Writing by Conor Humphries; Editing by Padraic Halpin and David Holmes)