Court dismisses Facebook bid to block EU data sharing flows

Ireland’s High Court has dismissed a bid by Facebook to block a European Union privacy regulation that could suspend the flow of data from the EU to the US.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal on Friday, the Irish court dismissed “all of Facebook’s procedural complaints about a preliminary decision on data flows that it received in August from the country’s Data Protection Commission”.

The court rejected Facebook’s claims that the privacy regulator had given it too little time to respond or issued a judgment prematurely.

Facebook first appealed the order in part because it claimed the Irish Data Protection Commission (IDPC) and the EU’s other privacy regulators “were moving too quickly and hadn’t given the company appropriate time to respond,” reports The Verge.

The IDPC leads enforcement of EU privacy law for Facebook and other companies that have their European headquarters in the country.

Facebook’s European headquarters are in Dublin, giving Irish regulators the lead in enforcing EU privacy law for the company.

The commission still needs to submit a final draft of its order to EU privacy regulators,

If it is approved, it could have a widespread impact on all companies doing trans-Atlantic business online.

According to Facebook, a lack of safe, secure and legal international data transfers would damage the economy and hamper the growth of data-driven businesses in the EU.