Big Tech expresses business-viability concerns in Europe over transatlantic data transfer deadlock

In its 2021 annual report to the U.S Security and Exchange Commission, released earlier this February, Meta noted that the present lack of a framework regulating transatlantic data transfer between the EU and the United States may leave the organization with no choice but to retract its online services, like Facebook and Instagram, from the region. Google also expressed similar concerns in January 2022, highlighting the “lack of legal stability for international data flows” facing the American and European business ecosystem. These concerns from Meta and Google come on the heels of multiple European Court of Human Rights and Data Protection Commissions rulings in European countries that have, in essence, held all current and existing frameworks for data transfer from Europe to the USA to be in breach of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).