Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has apologized to MEPs in Brussels over the massive personal data leak scandal involving millions of users of his site by a political consulting firm.
Zuckerberg agreed to meet with representatives of the European Parliament to answer questions about Cambridge Analytica's use of the personal data of 87 million Facebook users, 2,7 million of whom come from the EU.
He said the company had not done enough to prevent the abuse of the social networking site and that the regulatory framework was "important and inevitable".
"It has become clear that in the last two years we have not done enough to prevent the tools we have created from being used in a harmful way," he said in his opening remarks.
"Whether it is fake news, foreign interference in elections or programmers abusing people's information, we have not had a fairly broad oversight of our responsibilities. That was a mistake and I apologize. "
Sitting at a roundtable with MEPs, wearing a jacket, tie and white T-shirt, Zuckerberg reiterated his apology to US lawmakers in Congress last month.
However, questions remain about how Facebook allowed this leak to happen and whether it is doing enough to prevent it from happening again.
The Facebook CEO underlined Facebook's commitment to Europe, where it will have 10.000 employees by the end of the year, he said.
He added that investing in security would have a significant impact on Zuckerberg's profitability, but "keeping people safe will always be more important than maximizing our profits."
Some European officials still want a tougher line against big tech companies.