On Friday, Ireland’s High Court allowed the Irish regulator to inquire into Facebook’s data flows from the European Union to the United States. The judgement stated that the reliefs sought by FBI (Facebook Ireland) was refused and the claims made by it in the proceedings were dismissed.

The judgement also said that FBI had not established any basis for impugning the Data Protection Commissioner’s (DPC) decision or the Preliminaries Draft Decision or the procedures for the inquiry about by the DPC.

After the Irish High Court summarily dismissed its objections to obtaining relief from an inquiry that was being conducted by the Irish Data Protection Commission (IDPC), Facebook said that it would defend its position and show that it is complaint with European Union’s privacy laws.

A Facebook spokesperson said that the social media platform looked forward defending their compliance to the IDPC. The spokesperson also said that the preliminary decision could be damaging not only to Facebook but also to users and other businesses.

The European Union lays stricter standards and procedures when compared with the rest of the world in many issues including privacy laws. It has concerns that U.S. government surveillance may not respect the privacy rights of its citizens when their personal data is sent to the United States and will be used commercially.

Sometime ago, when Apple had announced that it would inform its users about how apps including Facebook collect data for targeted advertisements, Facebook said that it would affect small businesses. Unfortunately, leaked memos for its own staff pointed out the hypocrisy as the social media company was the one who made the most revenues from advertising and it would lose the most and not small businesses, if users opted out.

Amazon has also resisted huge attempts to unionize in the United States but had to do so in countries that make up the European Union. Uber and Lyft are other companies who classify their drivers as “independent contractors” in the U.S., so they need not be given pension, health, and holiday benefits.   This definition did not hold in the U.K. Courts. Drivers from Uber have been classified as workers and receive as many benefits as other workers in the U.K