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Big Tech Companies have their HQs in Ireland: The irish regulator turns a blind eye on the EU’s privacy laws.

21/09/2021

The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) has been a hot topic in the last period. The EU introduced the GDPR with the aim of protecting individual´s right to have control over their personal data, and with the hope to create a homogenous EU regulatory framework. However, since member States are individually responsible for the enforcement of the EU´s privacy laws within their territory, each country has reacted differently.

Chiara Fabrizi

The Financial Times recently raised this topic in its FT news briefing podcast: in Ireland “almost all privacy abuse complaints filed against these companies [i.e big tech companies] remain unresolved. Compare that to Spain, which has a smaller budget for data protection than Ireland, but it’s more active.”

Why is Ireland so reluctant to enforce the EU´s privacy laws? Ireland hosts the European headquarters of many US Tech Giants – e.g. Google, Facebook and Apple - and has all the interest to preserve favorable conditions for Tech companies.

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You can listen to the FT news briefing podcast here or read the Financial Times article.

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