Public Interest Groups Express ‘Extreme Concern’ Over Former Facebook Lobbyist Hire as Top EU Privacy Regulator

Niamh Sweeney, who worked as a lobbyist for Stripe as well as WhatsApp and Facebook, was named to the commission last month by the Irish government. The DPC is charged with overseeing the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for all firms with EU headquarters in Ireland, which include Meta, Google, Apple and Microsoft, among others. As such, it plays an outsize role in enforcing data privacy laws within the 27-nation bloc.

Sweeney “has held a long-standing senior public affairs position at one of the largest technology platforms that the DPC is mandated to regulate, and indeed in her latest role (which ended only last August) continued to advocate on behalf of these platforms,” the letter said. “All this raises serious questions about the perception and reality of the DPC’s independence at a time when its impartiality is of critical importance for the entire Union.”

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The letter also pointed to long-standing concerns over how vigorously DPC has pursued its enforcement responsibilities. “At the Irish DPC, investigations against major companies have been seldom in the last several years, with critical decisions often only materializing, if at all, under pressure from the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) and other Member State authorities, or indeed even after intervention by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU),” it said. “Patterns of delayed or limited enforcement continue to undermine trust in the DPC as an effective enforcer of the law.”

Related: Big Tech Lawyer Involved in Selection of Former Facebook Lobbyist as Top EU Privacy Regulator

The letter comes within days of reports that a lawyer with close ties to the tech companies DPC oversees had a hand in Sweeney’s appointment. Her selection was made by a panel of five people named by the Public Appointments Service, known as publicjobs. According to Politico, the panel included Leo Moore, a partner at law firm William Fry, where he heads the technology group. According to the firm’s website, he has represented several multinational and social media companies, including in matters before EU regulators.

Politico reported that the law firm previously advised Microsoft in a major U.S. court case concerning access to data stored on Irish servers. Irish media have also documented the firm’s work with the Irish government in a high-profile dispute over nearly €14 billion in back taxes sought from Apple.

“The appointment of a Commissioner with such close ties to an industry under investigation threatens to only reinforce perceived distrust in the Irish DPC at precisely a time when even greater assurances of independence are needed given wider geo-political events,” the groups’ letter said. “Any contractual obligations, such as non-disclosure agreements with entities regulated by the DPC, would exacerbate these risks from the outset.”

Signatories to the letter include Access Now, Open Markets Institute, Corporate Europe Observatory, noyb and the Civil Liberties Union for Europe.