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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives at the European Parliament on May 22, 2018.
Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s meeting with European lawmakers in Brussels on Tuesday has been criticized by political representatives for being too short and providing “no answers.”
Zuckerberg’s appearance in the European Parliament was facilitated by Antonio Tajani, the parliament’s president, and consisted of around an hour of questions and less than 10 minutes of answers.
“I was really not satisfied with the hearing yesterday because Zuckerberg gave no answers whatsoever,” Ska Keller, co-head of the Greens-European Free Alliance group in the European Parliament, told CNBC in a phone interview Tuesday.
“That was facilitated by the format, that there was no possibility to ask follow-up questions so that was definitely a very big problem created by the parliament’s president. But still, Zuckerberg could at least have answered some questions more precisely. But he really didn’t and was just repeating what he said in his opening statement, so really nothing new.”
CNBC understands that the format of the meeting was requested by Tajani. Tajani was not immediately available for comment.
Politicians in the U.S. and Europe are seeking answers from Facebook after it was revealed that the data of tens of millions may have been improperly shared with political data firm Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica briefly worked for President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign. Concerns have been raised over whether targeted advertising techniques and the use of Facebook data may have played a role in swaying elections.
Facebook has admitted that 87 million users’ data may have been shared with Cambridge Analytica, and that 2.7 million of those users were Europeans.
Zuckerberg was questioned by U.S. lawmakers on Capitol Hill last month. At times, he was unable to answer questions from politicians, saying instead that his team would follow-up with them afterwards.
