The company Meta is facing an important legal decision that could result in the exclusion of Facebook in Europe.

Ireland’s privacy chief Helen Dixon, who heads the country’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), told Politico that the body is “likely to finally rule on Facebook’s last legal tool for sending personal data to the US” before the European Union and the US succeed in negotiating a new data transfer agreement.

In July, the DPC published its draft decision to suspend this data transfer legal instrument. That draft is now awaiting approval from other privacy regulators in Europe and should be completed by mid-May.

This is expected to leave US tech giant Meta, which owns Facebook, without tools that allow it to legally transfer personal data such as family photos and geolocation data to the US, which are necessary for Facebook to function.

Meta previously said that such a decision could mean the end of its services in Europe, including Instagram.