EU data protection experts bury strict guidelines for social media presences

There has long been controversy as to whether public authorities are allowed to be active on social networks with their own pages such as Facebook fan pages. The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) actually wanted to clarify the matter last year. However, the body of EU data protection commissioners secretly and quietly buried a draft for relevant guidelines at its meeting at the beginning of December, reports the magazine "Follow the Money" in a newsletter. The initially planned strict regulations would have meant that thousands of offices across Europe would probably have had to give up their social media accounts.

Follow the Money refers to sources from the EDPB, according to which the rejected draft directive would have classified public administrative bodies that use social media as "joint controllers" of user data in most cases. This would have made them jointly responsible for any data protection shortcomings of platforms such as X, TikTok, Instagram or Facebook. What sounds like a casual change would have had massive consequences, explains Max Schrems, founder of the data protection association Noyb. Based on the – guidelines, which are non-binding in themselves –, anyone interested in taking action against public authorities or even private companies for their use of social media would have had better legal cards.

The provisional end of the guidelines shows just how divided the controllers responsible for enforcing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) are when it comes to a strict interpretation, even almost ten years after the standards were adopted. According to the report, the then EU Data Protection Commissioner Wojciech Wiewiórowski played a decisive role in the vote, voting against the draft together with the responsible supervisory authorities from Italy and France. The reason: the Polish citizen is fighting for re-election after six years in office. The EU Parliament prefers another candidate, while the Council of Ministers under the Polish presidency is in favor of a second term of office.

Back to the drawing board

Effectively banning public institutions from social media is likely to reduce Wiewiórowski's chances of retaining his post. The controller was currently unable to comment on the matter as he had to undergo an operation, according to a spokesperson. The EDPB is now faced with a shambles with its work on a potential directive and would largely have to start from scratch. If an agreement is reached after all, the new version is likely to be significantly weaker than the first.

In Germany, the former Federal Commissioner for Data Protection, Ulrich Kelber, angered the federal government with his instruction to stop the operation of federal Facebook pages. In March 2023, the Federal Press Office brought an action against this before the Cologne Administrative Court. Kelber sees the decision as a significant milestone, even in retrospect. Facebook was not prepared to make any adjustments. In the summer of 2023, the Saxon Data Protection Commissioner Juliane Hundert also prohibited the State Chancellery of the Free State of Saxony from continuing to operate a Facebook fan page. The government control center had been transferring data to the meta-subsidiary in the USA via the page for years, although there was no effective legal basis for this.

(vbr)