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Facebook takes action against data watchdog

Facebook has launched legal action against Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), according to a report from the Reuters news agency.

The report says the move is an attempt to halt a proposed order that could stop the company from transferring data from the European Union to the United States.

Proportionate

The US 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.

According to Facebook, the DPC, the company’s main regulator in the EU, had started an inquiry into its EU-US data transfers.

The DPC also suggested that a key mechanism used by the company for transatlantic data transfers cannot in practice be used for EU-US 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.