Facebook Can’t Dodge EU-Wide Privacy Orders, Top Court Rules (2)

Facebook Inc. and other U.S. tech giants can’t dodge potential privacy orders from European Union data protection authorities beyond their lead watchdog in Ireland, the bloc’s top court said in a ruling that tests the limits of beefed-up EU rules.

Under certain conditions, a national regulator may exercise its power “even though that authority is not the lead supervisory authority with regard to that processing,” the EU Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday.

At issue is the scope of the so-called one-stop-shop system, set up under the EU’s data protection rules since May 2018, which puts the authority in a ...