Cianan Brennan: Last roll of the dice for Meta as it awaits new data transfer system

Meta has appealed all the financial penalties it received from the commission bar one

The enormous €1.2bn fine handed out today by the Data Protection Commission to Facebook owner Meta is hugely noteworthy, but also something of a non-event. Picture: Brian Lawless 

The enormous €1.2bn fine handed out today by the Data Protection Commission to Facebook owner Meta is hugely noteworthy, but also something of a non-event.

It is noteworthy both because it is (as expected, by a distance) the largest fine handed out by a European regulator since the inception of GDPR in 2018, and also because the commission had to be told to hand out a fine by its own supervisor, the European Data Protection Board, having initially proposed a sanction and nothing more.