(Though it’s worth emphasizing that all we have today is an opinion, not binding law the CJEU itself has still to rule on the questions referred to it.) And if the Court follows its advisor’s view it could provide a major boost to privacy rights across the EU as antitrust authorities would get a green light to consider data protection compatibility as part of their assessment of competition rules. The FCO’s case argues that the tech giant’s combining of data on users across multiple services and websites - ergo, Facebook’s total denial of users’ privacy - is itself an “exploitative abuse” linked to its market power and therefore also an abuse of competition laws that the FCO is competent to regulate.įacebook has been appealing against the FCO’s order by arguing that antirust enforcers should essentially stay in their lane - since they are not the designated oversight bodies for the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).īut today’s opinion pushes against such siloing. The opinion follows a referral to the Court of Justice (CJEU) related to an appeal by Facebook (aka Meta) which has been challenging a 2019 order by Germany’s competition watchdog (the FCO) against Facebook’s so-called ‘superprofiling’ of users. A non-binding opinion issued today by an influential advisor to the Europe Union’s top court could foreshadow a major regional development at the intersection of privacy and competition regulation - or ‘privacy vs competition’ as it’s sometimes narrowly framed.
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