As a Luxembourg judge suspended a court order requiring a daily payment of $750,000 to cover the disputed $844 million (746 million euros) fine, Amazon will receive an early Christmas gift.
Punishment stems from July ruling Regarding Amazon Europe Core S.à rl, the Luxembourg National Data Protection Commission (CNPD) claimed that Amazon’s processing of personal data does not comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
This is based on Amazon’s financial documents for the second quarter of 2021 Earnings report [PDF].
Amazon said it will challenge the ruling, which it believes is baseless.
In a statement Register At the time, the global e-commerce giant said: “Maintaining the security of customer information and their trust is the top priority. No data leakage occurred, and no customer data was exposed to any third party. These facts are indisputable. We strongly believe that We disagree with the CNPD’s ruling and we intend to appeal.
“The decision on how we display relevant advertisements to customers depends on subjective and untested interpretations of European privacy laws, and the proposed fines are even out of proportion to this interpretation.”
The 746 million euro fine is by far the largest fine under the GDPR, which is nearly 15 times higher than the French National Commission for Informatics and Freedom (CNIL) imposing 50 million euros on Google in 2019. In fact, Amazon’s fines are more than twice the sum of all previous GDPR fines (303 million euros).
The judge ruled that the Luxembourg data protection authority’s order was “not clear enough, accurate and without uncertainty” to allow Amazon to satisfy the ultimatum. According to Bloomberg.
At a hearing earlier this month, Amazon attorney Thomas Berger said that the deadline for the regulator was “unrealistic” because it was not clear what changes needed to be made. “We don’t have guidance on what we need to do, so what should we do?” ®
