European regulators forced their Irish counterpart to get strict.
Good morning. David Meyer here in Berlin, filling in for Alan.
The EU has a very tough online privacy law in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which can in theory see companies fined up to 4% of global revenues for serious infringements. But the law has so far been poorly enforced, most notably by the somewhat sluggish Data Protection Commission (DPC) in Ireland, the European headquarters for much of Big Tech.
That honeymoon may be drawing to a close, though—not only because the EU’s top court said in June that other national regulators can also tackle tech firms more freely, but because pressure from those other watchdogs has now forced changes in Ireland, too.
At the start of this year, the Irish DPC proposed a fine of up to €50 million ($59 million) for WhatsApp, due to the Facebook subsidiary’s GDPR infringements—it didn’t give users enough information about how it used their personal data. Although the law came into effect in May 2018, and this case was one of the first to be launched after that happened, legal wrangles severely delayed the regulator’s response.
The DPC’s counterparts on the European continent were not impressed with that response, when it finally arrived. Eight of them objected, saying the amount was too low. Following a dispute-resolution procedure, the European Data Protection Board—the umbrella body for the regulators, established under the GDPR—ordered the DPC in July to increase the fine.
This morning, the Irish regulator did just that, whacking WhatsApp with a €225 million penalty and ordering the company to fix the problems that led to it. It’s the second-biggest GDPR fine to be issued thus far, after Luxembourg’s €746 million penalty for Amazon in July.
WhatsApp says it will appeal the fine. “We have worked to ensure the information we provide is transparent and comprehensive and will continue to do so. We disagree with the decision today regarding the transparency we provided to people in 2018 and the penalties are entirely disproportionate,” it said in a statement.
That’s to be expected—it’s very rare for a company not to appeal a fine of this size, and WhatsApp had only set aside €77.5 million for this fine. The broad takeaway here is that, after a languid introduction, the GDPR is growing teeth. This was a pretty embarrassing episode for the Irish regulator, and it’s a lot less likely to play nice in future.
More news below.
David Meyer
@superglaze
david.meyer@fortune.com
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This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.
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