Ireland's the Wrong Privacy Watchdog for Europe
Ireland has let Big Tech exploit the data of EU citizens for too long, and hosting those companies on its shores probably hasn’t helped.
Not up to the job?
Photographer: Matt Cardy/Getty Images EuropeEurope’s ambition to lead the world on data privacy has a weak spot: Ireland. The country’s Data Protection Commission works on behalf of 447 million EU citizens to defend their data from Meta Platforms Inc., Alphabet Inc. (the parent companies of Facebook and Google respectively), Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc. and roughly a dozen other tech giants — and it’s been too lax on the job.
The DPC has barely dented its casework as Europe’s main privacy enforcer, publishing decisions on about 2% of the 164 privacy cases it has taken on with “cross border” significance, according to a September study by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, a human-rights organization. It’s had this job since Europe’s landmark General Data Protection Regulation was applied three years ago. Ireland is responsible for policing an array of large tech firms because they have based their European headquarters on its shores.