The German official has asked government agencies to close Facebook pages

The German data protection commissioner has called on all government agencies to remove Facebook pages by the end of the year, arguing that the social media giant is not complying with German and European privacy laws.

Commissioner Ulrich Kelber said in a recent letter to German authorities that almost two years of negotiations with Facebook have not made any progress, and that the pages of the platform’s organizations therefore did not comply with the General European Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The move is exacerbating pressure from European regulators on Big Tech. Last week, the German antitrust guard launched an investigation into Apple, following similar polls by Facebook, Google and Amazon.

Earlier this month, the European Court of Justice ruled that privacy guards in any EU country could, in some cases, enforce the GDPR on their own against a company.

Kelber said he will also start monitoring Instagram social networking apps like Facebook, as well as the TikTok video app and the Clubhouse audio platform. He also advised the authorities to remove the accounts from these sites due to similar concerns about data privacy.

EU law stipulates that personal data may only go to jurisdictions with equally stringent data privacy legislation, and the US does not comply with these rules. Kelber said it is currently impossible to prevent the personal data of Facebook page followers from being transmitted to the US.

In October 2019, Facebook provided an addendum that addressed data transparency and processing, but Kelber said it did not comply with guidelines for German federal and state data protection. The US company has given no other guarantee.

“In my opinion, this shows that Facebook is not ready to make any changes to the data processing,” he said. “From January 2022, for the benefit of interested citizens, I would like to gradually use the remedial measures available to Article 58 of the GDPR.”

Government offices have argued that such pages are critical in the fact that fewer people rely on formal media for outreach to get information and increasingly turn to social media. Kelber said he initially refused to remove the pages because of those concerns, but said it was a continuation of negotiations. He no longer believed that such conversations had “perceptible chances of success.”

Facebook said: “At the end of 2019, we updated the Page Insights supplement to clarify the responsibility of Facebook and page operators… It is important for us that government agencies also use Facebook pages to communicate with people on our platform in accordance with privacy.”

Steffen Seibert, a government spokeswoman for Angela Merkel, said in a press conference on Wednesday that they are examining the commissioner’s assessment, but declined to comment.

Seibert added that government agencies had a “model” function on data privacy. “That’s why I think you have a special duty to act in accordance with data protection law.”