While this was ultimately Luxembourg’s decision, all eyes will be now be on the Irish authority as it decides on several high profile cases involving Big Tech
Little detail has been disclosed on the case: On 30 July, Amazon reported that it received a €746m fine from the Luxembourg data protection authority, the CNPD earlier in July. It was disclosed in a US regulatory filing (rather than from the CNPD) stating that it believes the decision to be without merit and that it will defend it vigorously. It is understood the decision follows a complaint filed in 2018 from the French civil rights group La Quadrature Du Net. The complaint led the CNPD to investigate Amazon’s targeted advertising practices, which were allegedly carried out without consent.
The CNPD’s fine is by far the biggest under the GDPR to date: Until recently, the largest ones had been issued by France against Google (€50m in 2019, and €100m in 2020 which is pending legal challenge). The fine amounts to about 4% of Amazon’s annual net income for 2020 (USD21.3bn). Under the GDPR, fines can be up to 4% of a company’s annual turnover. Discussions between European data protection authorities reportedly contributed to the size of the fine, since the CNPD’s draft decision outlined a penalty of only half this amount. It was increased to €746m following complaints from other authorities to the European Data Protection Board.
The Irish authority will now have to up its game: Now that the Luxembourg authority has issued such a large fine, all eyes will be on Ireland. Due to the one-stop-shop mechanism in the GDPR, the Irish Data Protection Commissioner is the lead authority for nearly all the cases involving Big Tech (Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have headquarters there). So far, the DPC has only fined Twitter €450k and is reportedly facing a significant backlog. The DPC expects to make draft decisions in several cases involving Big Tech this year, although so far none have been announced. The DPC will have to show its European counterparts that it is up to the task in order to avoid further criticism from other authorities, following the disappointment expressed by Germany in recent months.
