Facebook threatens to leave Europe if the EU prevents it from taking Europeans data to the United States

Donald Trump has opened Pandora’s Box. And now, things can turn against American companies. Could Facebook leave Europe in November? We doubt it a lot, but that is the order that Mark Zuckerberg’s company has thrown at the European Union courts if it does not let them take European data to the United States.

This weekend, the Chinese company TikTok was forced to sell part of its business to the North American companies Oracle and Walmart and give up its source code not to be banned in the country. This is because the North American government alleges possible espionage of the North Americans’ data on the Chinese government. That is why Oracle will manage that data without leaving the United States.

The veto of Chinese companies, which began with Huawei, alleging possible government espionage, can be turned against US companies themselves … because other countries can ask the same of them.
According to the Business Post, the Supreme Court of Ireland, on behalf of the European Union. It will force Facebook to process the personal data of Europeans within the European Union because current privacy agreements and systems do not guarantee. The specific surveillance programs of the US government spy on these data.

To be precise, this decision has nothing to do with the US veto of Chinese companies. Instead, it goes much further back, specifically the Facebook spy scandal, when it was discovered that the Cambridge Analytica company had been using Facebook’s data with impunity to carry out electoral manipulations in favor of Donald Trump and Brexit, among other things.

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The European Union has already announced legislation to prevent the personal data of Europeans from leaving Europe. A decision that the Supreme Court of Ireland has ratified.

But while Chinese companies have no choice but to give in, North American companies seem to resist it. Facebook’s Data Protection Director, Yvonne Cunnane, affirms in an alleged court statement leaked by the Business Post that It does not know how Facebook is going to continue operating in Europe (and that implies WhatsApp and Instagram. Among others) if it cannot take the personal data of Europeans to the United States.

Mark Zuckerberg’s company has appealed the ruling, which will be reviewed again in November. If the Court upholds the decision by then, Facebook will have no choice but to leave Europe (it certainly will). But, as it has threatened, leave Europe …