Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, PRIVACY NEWS: European Parliament, Council of Ministers reach compromise on data protection, (Dec 16, 2015)
By Brian Hammond,TR Daily
Negotiators for the European Parliament and the European Council of Ministers yesterday reached a compromise on a new data protection regulation and directive that the crafters said would give citizens control over their data while creating "clarity and legal certainty" for business to spur competition in the digital market.
The package next goes to a vote in Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee on December 17. If approved, it would be put to a vote by Parliament as a whole early next year, after which member states would have two years to reflect the provisions of the new EU laws into their national legislation.
The full details of the compromise agreement were not immediately available, but the European Commission said that the rules would give individuals easier access to their own data, make it easier to transfer personal data between service providers, and provide consumers with a right to know when their data has been hacked. It also includes a "clarified ' right to be forgotten, the Commission said.
The EC added that the reforms would help small and midsize enterprises by eliminating the requirements for notifications to supervisory authorities, allowing them to charge for providing access to data where requests are "manifestly unfounded or excessive," exempting them from the obligation to appoint a data protection officer, and exempting them from the obligation to carry out an impact assessment "unless there is a high risk."
"Today's negotiations hopefully have cleared the way for a final agreement," said Jan Philipp Albrecht, member of Parliament from Germany and Parliament's lead member on the regulation. "In the future, firms breaching EU data protection rules could be fined as much as 4% of annual turnover—for global internet companies in particular, this could amount to billions. In addition, companies will also have to appoint a data protection officer if they process sensitive data on a large scale or collect information on many consumers."
Albrecht added that the regulation returns control over citizens’ personal data to citizens. Companies will not be allowed to divulge information that they have received for a particular purpose without the permission of the person concerned. Consumers will have to give their explicit consent to the use of their data.
"Unfortunately, member states could not agree to set a 13-year age limit for parental consent for children to use social media such as Facebook or Instagram," he added. "Instead, member states will now be free to set their own limits between 13 and 16 years."
Andrus Ansip, Vice President—Digital Single Market for the European Commission, said: "Today's agreement is a major step towards a Digital Single Market. It will remove barriers and unlock opportunities. The digital future of Europe can only be built on trust. With solid common standards for data protection, people can be sure they are in control of their personal information."
Ansip said the next step is to "remove unjustified barriers which limit cross-border data flow: local practice and sometimes national law, limiting storage and processing of certain data outside national territory. So let us move ahead and build an open and thriving data economy in the EU—based on the highest data protection standards and without unjustified barriers."
News: Privacy