Thursday, January 14, 2021
On January 13, 2021, Advocate General (“AG”) Michal Bobek of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) issued his Opinion in the Case C-645/19 of Facebook Ireland Limited, Facebook Inc., Facebook Belgium BVBA v. the Belgian Data Protection Authority (“Belgian DPA”).
Background
The Belgian DPA initiated judicial proceedings against several members of the Facebook group before the Belgian Courts in September 2015. The Belgian DPA requested that the Court order Facebook to stop placing cookies on Internet users’ devices without their consent and stop collecting data in an allegedly excessive manner when they browse a web page in the Facebook.com domain or on third parties’ websites, including via Facebook social plug-ins and pixels. The proceedings, which are currently still in progress before the Court of Appeal of Brussels, were limited to Facebook Belgium BVBA after the Court of Appeal of Brussels previously establ