The comments were also echoed by Germany’s new economy minister Robert Habeck who said: “After I was hacked I have lived without Facebook and Twitter for four years and life has been fantastic.”

Writing on Twitter, German MEP Axel Voss warned Meta “cannot just blackmail the EU into giving up its data protection standards, leaving the EU would be their loss.”

Meta has denied it its ‘threatening’ to withdraw services from Europe and has been raising concerns over the legislation for a number of years.

Previously, Meta’s data transfers had been covered by the Privacy Shield framework agreed between the US and the EU, however this was declared invalid by the European Court of Justice in 2020.