Cullen International’s new benchmark shows that data protection authorities in half of the 16 surveyed European countries imposed fines on big tech companies for either General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or e‑Privacy Directive (ePD) infringements since the entry into application of the GDPR in May 2018.

The benchmark shows that Luxembourg is the country with the highest sum of fines imposed with €746m, followed by Ireland and France.

Amazon, WhatsApp and Google are the big tech companies which incurred in the highest sum of fines at €781m, €225m and €155.7m respectively.

The benchmark also looks at whether, in the event of GDPR infringement in multiple EU member states, big tech companies benefitted from the cooperation and consistency mechanism introduced by the GDPR. The mechanism aims to achieve the consistent application of the GDPR throughout the EU.

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