META Meta Platforms Inc

By Natalia Drozdiak, Sam Schechner and Valentina Pop 

BRUSSELS -- Top European Union lawmakers are set to interrogate Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday over the company's handling of alleged user-data misuse and election interference on the platform, as the social-network giant seeks to appease officials in a region where the company is regulated strictly.

The event starts in Brussels around 6:30 p.m. local time, or 12:30 p.m. ET. Roughly a dozen of the European Parliament's most senior members and its president will press the Facebook CEO on issues such as how the social network protects Europeans' data and the spread of fake news on the platform by outside actors to influence elections.

Lawmakers say they will seek answers about how Facebook will prevent further scandals like the one involving data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, which allegedly improperly obtained the personal information of as many as 87 million Facebook users. The data company has since announced it was closing down.

Mr. Zuckerberg will likely also face tough questions more specifically over how the social network will comply with the EU's new privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, which enters into force Friday. Jan Philipp Albrecht, the German lawmaker who led the GDPR negotiations for the parliament, is among the questioners and said he would seek clarifications from the company about its privacy-policy updates.

"It's clear that [the policies] won't [meet the demands of the GDPR,] so it's one of the points where Zuckerberg needs to elaborate on," said Mr. Albrecht.

He said a particular focus is whether all the data Facebook collects on users is truly necessary for the service.

Facebook is under pressure to show that it respects European privacy law before GDPR takes effect. Even before the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the company was at pains to show that it embraces EU standards -- recently sending senior executives to meet EU officials and rolling out changes to its privacy practices.

Brussels is just the first stop for Mr. Zuckerberg as he seeks to calm tensions with European officials. On Wednesday, Mr. Zuckerberg will travel to Paris, where he will attend a government-organized lunch with executives from Uber Technologies Inc., Microsoft Corp. and other firms about using technology to promote the common good, and Thursday he will speak at a tech conference. While in town, Mr. Zuckerberg will have a private meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.

"No subject will be avoided," an official at the French presidential palace said of the meeting with Mr. Zuckerberg. "The president is very direct."

EU and European national regulators for years have been among the most active world-wide in trying to rein in Facebook. A working group of several EU data-protection watchdogs brought sanctions against the company for prior changes to its privacy policies, though some of those decisions were thrown out in court. Some EU regulators are also investigating the company's use of data about users of chat app WhatsApp, which it bought in 2014 for $22 billion.

The company has also faced criticism in Europe for its handling of hate speech and terrorist propaganda. The EU has pushed Facebook and other social-media companies to speed up their removal of extremist propaganda and hate speech under threat of new legislation. Germany last year passed a new law threatening social-media companies with fines of up to EUR50 million ($58.9 million) if they fail to quickly delete hate speech and other illegal content.

Mr. Zuckerberg has previously admitted Facebook made mistakes over how it handled privacy issues and the spread of fake news. In April, he testified before lawmakers on Capitol Hill, facing questions over the user-data scandal and admitting the company made a combination of missteps.

Convincing Mr. Zuckerberg to speak was a victory for the 751-member parliament, which is the EU's most democratic institution but wields little power. Facebook has so far spurned a similar invitation from the U.K. parliament. Mr. Zuckerberg had initially agreed to answer questions in a closed-door meeting. That sparked outrage from many EU politicians and commentators, prompting the parliament to negotiate an agreement to webcast the event.

Write to Natalia Drozdiak at natalia.drozdiak@wsj.com, Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com and Valentina Pop at valentina.pop@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 22, 2018 06:20 ET (10:20 GMT)

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