The European Union’s top court said Meta Platforms Inc. is still subject to consumer group lawsuits for possible violations of data protection rules, Bloomberg reports.
In a dispute between the Federation of German Consumer Organizations and Meta’s Facebook, Germany’s top civil court sought the EU tribunal’s guidance on whether lawsuits to protect consumers from Big Tech were still possible under GDPR.
The EU’s data protection rules do not prevent “national legislation which allow a consumer protection association to bring legal proceedings,” the EU Court of Justice clarified.
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation empowered data watchdogs to issue fines of 4 percent of a company’s annual sales. The new rules put the regulators in charge of monitoring violations and investigating complaints, according to Bloomberg.
The EU regulators had penalized Meta’s WhatsApp €225 million ($266 million) for failing to disclose how it shared its data with its parent company.
