Facebook Ireland Limited – €60,000,000 Fine (France, 2021)

Facebook Ireland Limited (hereafter 'FIL') is a subsidiary owned wholly by Meta Platforms Inc. In April 2021 the French DPA (CNIL) carried out an online inspection of the website "facebook.com" in the context of an investigation into the processing of the personal data of French individuals visiting the website. The purpose of this inspection was to verify the company's compliance with the Loi 'Informatique et Libertés', and in particular with Article 82 thereof. In September 2021, the case manager that carried out the inspection issued a report to the restricted panel (that ultimately determines whether a breach occurred) that recommended the latter issue a fine and an injunction (to bring its processing activities into compliance with Article 82 Loi 'Informatique et Libertés') against the company. The restricted panel considered the evidence that was gathered by the case manager, and drew the conclusions below. = First, the CNIL had to justify that it was the competent authority in this case. == FIL argued the CNIL was not the competent authority because the alleged breach did not fall within the material scope of the ePrivacy Directive. However, the CNIL considered the contrary, namely that it was materially competent under the Loi 'Informatique et Libertés' (which implemented the ePrivacy Directive) to monitor and sanction the access or registration of information by companies in the terminals of users of the "facebook.com" website in France. After a lengthy discussion of national authorities' powers under the "one-stop shop" mechanism provided for by the GDPR, the CNIL held that it was in fact competent to control and initiate a sanction procedure against the aforementioned processing, provided that the latter was related to its territorial jurisdiction. == The CNIL considered it was territorially competent under Article 3 GDPR since the processing that was the subject of the present procedure, namely consisting of accessing or recording information on