Facebook has no shortage of privacy troubles in Europe, but this week the social media giant has one less problem to worry about after a Belgian court overturned a decision that would have prevented to platform from tracking offline users.

Last year, a case brought forward by a Belgian privacy watchdog concluded that Facebook could no longer use cookies to track users who visited its pages without actually logging in, and as a result, Facebook barred unregistered users from accessing public pages entirely. According to Facebook, the platform uses those cookies to track offline users as a way to differentiate between hackers and legitimate visitors, and the Belgian court’s ruling would have presented a security risk for the site.

Now that the ruling has been overturned, Facebook says that it will once again allow offline users to access its pages.

“We are pleased with the court’s decision and look forward to bringing all our services back online for people in Belgium,” a Facebook spokeswoman said.

It’s not over yet

Facebook appealed the Belgian court’s original decision on the grounds that because its European headquarters is in Ireland, the Belgian government has no jurisdiction to rule on its privacy policies. Now the Belgian court seems to have agreed, and its decision could have wide reaching consequences on the company’s future operations in Europe.

“The decision is unfortunately not in our favor…we’re not happy obviously,” said Sarah Boulerhcha, a spokeswoman for the Belgian Privacy Commission, the privacy watchdog that originally filed the case against Facebook.

But while Belgium may have overturned one ruling on Facebook’s privacy policies, the social network still has other battles to fight in Europe. The company is currently the subject of a class action lawsuit in Ireland that was filed last year by Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems.

“This is about limiting what Facebook can do with Europeans’ data,” Schrems told The New York Times after filing the suit. “How much should they be allowed to dig into the souls of their users? That’s what we’re fighting for.”

Image courtesy of Facebook Inc