European Union regulators fined $Facebook(FB.US)$'s chat service WhatsApp 225 million euros, equivalent to around $266 million, for failing to tell the bloc's residents enough about what it does with their data, ramping up privacy enforcement against U.S. tech companies.

As part of the decision, regulators ordered WhatsApp to move its privacy policies and communication to users into compliance with several provisions of Europe's privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, which regulators began enforcing in mid-2018.

"We disagree with the decision today regarding the transparency we provided to people in 2018 and the penalties are entirely disproportionate," the spokesman said, adding that the unit "has worked to ensure the information we provide is transparent and comprehensive."

-A spokesman for WhatsApp said it would appeal. 

Under the GDPR, Thursday's decision can be appealed in Irish courts, but also directly with the EU's Court of Justice, because it was made based on a vote of a board representing all EU privacy regulators.

The WhatsApp decision is the latest in a wave of enforcement from EU regulators and comes after activists have complained that Europe's application of GDPR has been too slow and weak. Ireland's privacy regulator says more decisions are in the works.

Thursday's fine, representing about 0.8% of Facebook's 2020 profit, is the second-largest since the regulators began enforcing GDPR. It comes nearly two months after Luxembourg fined Amazon.com Inc. a record-setting 746 million euros for GDPR violations related to its use of consumer data in advertising. Until the Amazon fine, the largest penalty under GDPR had been a 50 million euro fine against Alphabet Inc.'s Google from France's privacy regulator in early 2019, according to law firm DLA Piper.

In both the Amazon and WhatsApp cases, regulators issued decisions only after consulting with their other EU counterparts in a power-sharing mechanism set out in law. And in both cases, the other EU privacy regulators pushed for the fines that were initially proposed to be increased, people familiar with the cases said.

In the WhatsApp case, Ireland, which leads EU privacy enforcement for Facebook because its European headquarters are in Dublin, had proposed a fine of up to 50 million euros to cover various infringements, according to the people familiar with the cases. But after objections from eight other EU countries' watchdogs, Ireland triggered a dispute-resolution process in the GDPR. A board of all EU privacy regulators voted in late July to order the Irish regulator to calculate a bigger fine, the Irish regulator said Thursday.

Ireland, which also leads GDPR enforcement for U.S. tech companies like Google and Apple Inc., has been a focus of criticism from activists -- and even some EU regulators -- for not having issued more decisions. Before Thursday's decision, the authority had issued a final judgment in only one case against a large tech company, fining Twitter Inc. 450,000 euros in December.

In response to the criticism, Helen Dixon, who leads Ireland's privacy regulator, has said the tech cases are complex, and that they must be handled carefully or risk being tossed out later in court. The regulator has also noted that Ireland has several other cases involving large U.S. tech companies nearing draft decisions.