After Meta was prohibited from collecting data by the German authorities, Meta faced a challenge.
Related: S. Korea gives Google and Meta billions of won in fines for breaking privacy rules
After determining that Meta was an abuse of its dominant position in the social networking market, the German Federal Competition Authority had banned Meta from data processing.
Facebook had challenged the German court’s decision in Duesseldorf. The court had referred the case to the European court.
The EU court’s advocate stated Tuesday that, while the antitrust authority doesn’t have jurisdiction to rule on an infraction of data protection rules but compliance with such rules can be used as an “important indicator” when determining if an entity violated competition rules.
In this instance, the court adviser suggested that sensitive personal data such as the individual’s ethnicity, health, or sexual orientation could be banned.
To be exempted from the prohibition on such data, the user must “fully know that he has made personal data public by explicit act”.
The advocate general stated that “conduct that involves visiting websites and applications, entering data into these websites and apps, and clicking on buttons embedded into them” cannot be considered the same as conduct that makes public sensitive personal data.
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Although the opinion of the advocate general is not binding, it can often indicate which court will rule.
