Court continues stay on decision that Meta must suspend EU-US data transfer

Facebook’s owner, Meta, has been granted an extension of an interim stay on a decision that it must suspend the transfer and storage of user data from Europe to the United States.

On Monday, Mr Justice Denis McDonald, who heads the Commercial Court, agreed to continue to the end of July a stay he granted to Meta earlier this month against the decision made by the Data Protection Commission (DPC).

The stay had been granted on an ex-parte basis, with only the Meta side represented, and adjourned to allow the DPC to respond.

When the case returned on Monday, Catherine Donnelly SC, for the DPC, said she understood the European Commission would next month give a decision on whether the US offers an adequate level of data protection, or what is known as an “adequacy decision”.

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Counsel said the adequacy decision “may render all this unnecessary”.

The DPC, in its decision, fined Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd €1.2 billion and ordered it to cease unlawful processing and storage of personal data of millions of European Economic Area (EU countries along with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) Facebook users.

It followed a successful legal challenge by Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems over concerns that EEA users’ data is not sufficiently protected from US intelligence agencies when it is transferred across the Atlantic.

Declan McGrath SC, for Meta, told the court on Monday that his side would be opposing an application by Mr Schrems on behalf of the digital rights organisation he set up, NOYB (None of Your Business), to be joined as a notice party in the case.

Eileen Barrington SC, on behalf of the US government, said she would be seeking to be joined as an “amicus curiae” (friend of the court).

James Doherty SC, for NOYB, said his side had not been supplied with the papers in the two cases, one a judicial review and the other a statutory challenge, being brought by Meta. However, it had now been agreed that, subject to an undertaking as to confidentiality which his client will provide, Meta would supply the papers, he said.

The judge said he would hear both the US government application and the NOYB application in two weeks.

He continued the stay on the DPC decision until July 31st and gave directions on the exchange of documents for the hearing of the full stay application on that date.