BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Europe’s top court on Tuesday said national data watchdogs in Europe may act against companies even if they are not lead regulators for the firms, in a blow to Facebook which has disputed the Belgian regulator’s power.
“Under certain conditions, a national supervisory authority may exercise its power to bring any alleged infringement of the GDPR before a court of a member state, even though that authority is not the lead supervisory authority with regard to that processing,” the EU Court of Justice (CJEU) said.
The CJEU got involved after a Belgian court sought guidance on Facebook’s challenge against the territorial competence of the Belgian data watchdog’s bid to stop the company from tracking users in Belgium through cookies stored in the company’s social plug-ins, regardless of whether they have an account or not.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee)
