Facebook Going to Court in Ireland to Salvage Its EU to U.S. Data Transfer Practices

Facebook Inc. launched legal action on Friday against Ireland’s Data Protection Commission in an attempt to halt a proposed order that could stop the company from transferring data from the European Union to the United States.

The U.S. social media giant urged regulators “to adopt a pragmatic and proportionate approach until a sustainable long-term solution can be reached,” a company representative said in a statement.

The Irish commission, Facebook’s lead regulator in the EU, had commenced an inquiry into the company controlled EU-U.S. data transfers.

It also suggested that a key mechanism used by the company for transatlantic data transfers cannot in practice be used for EU-U.S. data transfers, Facebook said on Wednesday.

Facebook had said that it believed the mechanism, Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs), had been deemed valid by the Court of Justice of the European Union in July.

The Irish regulator declined to comment.

(Reporting by Akanksha Rana in Bengaluru and Conor Humphries in Dublin; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Sriraj Kalluvila)