The Meta group, which according to some Anglo-Saxon media would hypothesize to withdraw its social networks from Europe, reaffirms, Monday, its attachment to the Old Continent.
Annoyed by the European policy on the transfer of personal data outside the European Union, Mark Zuckerberg and the Meta group, owned by Facebook, reportedly expressed their fears to the American financial market authority, the Securities and Exchange Commission, raising the risk of withdrawing their products and markets from the European continent, and this includes in particular the king of social networks and Instagram as well. But Meta wanted to clarify things, with one caveat, however.
Meta and other companies ‘depend on EU-US data transfers’
” We have absolutely no desire and no plan to withdraw from Europe “Begins the press release from the Californian group that we received this Monday noon. From the first words of this reaction coming from a Meta spokesperson, we feel a desire to put out any fire and any controversy. Nevertheless, the company still has the European rules across its throat.
” The simple reality is that Meta, and many other companies, organizations and services, depend on data transfers between the EU and US in order to operate global services. “, continues the company. ” Like other companies, we have followed European rules and rely on standard contractual clauses and appropriate data safeguards to operate a global service “.
Here, Meta refers to the Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) which replaced the Privacy Shield, a regime abandoned by the EU in 2020 and which allowed any company, such as Facebook, to transfer European user data into non-EU countries, such as the United States. The CCTs in force today are more restrictive and more regulated, so that the data of citizens of the area are as well protected outside the EU as within the EU.
US group calls for clear, global rules
Meta, which seems to have seduced the spirit of the European Ministers of Justice last week, including Éric Dupond-Moretti, in the construction of the future legal framework in the fight against online hate, does not want to Europe backs on the part of personal data. And what could be likened to pressure turns, reading Meta’s reaction, into a call for cooperation that could result in a win-win situation.
” Fundamentally, businesses need clear, global rules to protect transatlantic data flows over the long term, and like more than 70 other businesses across a wide range of industries, we are closely monitoring the potential impact on our European operations. as these developments progress “explains Meta.
It is true that Meta is far from the only company to have raised certain risks related to data transfers. The German business process management software publisher SAP, for example, expressed in 2021 its fears about sometimes contradictory data protection laws and raised the possibility of not applying some of them. Siemens, Alliance, Braun and Telefonica Germany are also among the companies reluctant to change regulations, all citing a ” uncertainty » as to the economic consequences of the various regulations, and fearing losing contracts by the shovel. Putting the cursor in a position that can satisfy is far from obvious.
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