Twitter executives in Dublin are reported to have given assurances to Europe’s commissioner for justice that they would continue to meet regulatory requirements following large-scale layoffs that sparked concern in Brussels.
On Thursday Didier Reynders met the company’s management at its European headquarters. He had earlier expressed concerns that key executives the commission had been engaging with on regulatory requirements were among those fired following the recent takeover by Elon Musk.
RTÉ reported comments from Mr Reynders indicating that he had received assurances from the platform it would continue to meet its obligations.
“We received a clear commitment to work on this from Twitter,” he said. “In terms of decisions relating to the reductions of staff, we want to be sure there are resources to protect the data of users.”
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Earlier this week it emerged Mr Reynders was to seek clarity from both Twitter and Meta about who would assume responsibility for compliance with EU regulations following substantial restructuring plans announced at the tech giants. He had warned that substantial fines were possible if the companies proved unable to comply with GDPR data privacy regulations and the new Digital Services Act (DSA), which obliges social networks to remove illegal content.
“We want to be sure that after such a sequence of different decisions to fire the employees it’s still possible to have competent people, and enough competent people, in those companies to be fully compliant with the regulations,” Mr Reynders told The Irish Times. “If it’s not, of course, you know, that we have some possible means to act. Now there are in the DSA very huge possible fines.”
