Facebook, privacy activist Schrems face off in July 9 court hearing

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Facebook will face Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems next week at Europe’s top court in a landmark case that could affect how hundreds of thousands of companies transfer personal data worldwide as well as Europeans’ privacy rights.

At issue is standard contractual clauses used by Facebook and other companies to transfer personal data to the United States and other parts of the world and whether these violate Europeans’ fundamental right to privacy.

Cross-border data transfers worth billions of dollars are a fact of life for businesses ranging from banks to carmakers to industrial giants.

Schrems, an Austrian law student, successfully fought against the EU’s previous privacy rules called Safe Harbour in 2015. He is now challenging Facebook’s use of such standard clauses on the grounds that they do not offer sufficient data protection safeguards.

Facebook’s lead regulator, the Irish Data Protection agency, took the case to the High Court in…