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I believe this is exactly what the EU intended. Currently, Facebook is profiting handsomely off EU users but using every loophole in the book to avoid paying taxes.

If they make it difficult to run operations that cross the EU-US border, then that's a problem for Facebook, but EU-only startups will be just fine. In effect, it shields EU companies from US competition.

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This is not what EU political bodies intended. In fact EU made agreements with USA twice to avoid this situation. And EU courts decided twice that the agreements were invalid due to lack of protections to EU citizens in USA.

EU commission wants to sign new agreement with USA, but they do not want to be found incompetent by EU courts for the third time.

So, this time EU negotiates for meaningful protections, but USA does not want to provide them.

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