Tag Archives: draft data protection regulation

Germany: Peter Schaar welcomes Proposal for Amendments by the European Parliament

According to the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Peter Schaar, the report on the European General Data Protection Regulation submitted by the rapporteur of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) of the European Parliament, Jan Philipp Albrecht, has to be seen as an important signal for a Europe-wide high level of data protection.

Peter Schaar: The proposed amendments would clearly improve the European Commission’s draft on the reform of European data protection law. The combination of personal data from different sources (profiling) shall be further restricted and the data subjects’ rights shall be strengthened. The data subjects’ right of objection shall be applied without any premises and thus independently of special personal reasons. I am also positive about the independent status of data protection authorities when coordinated action against privacy breaches shall be improved.

The European Parliament hopefully will approve the proposals and I advise the Federal Government to actively advance the absolutely necessary improvements of European data protection law in Council.

The rapporteur’s proposals for amendment prepare the LIBE Committee’s opinion, which regularly serves as a basis for decision-making in the plenary of the European Parliament. The data protection reform requires the consent of the European Parliament and of the Council of Governments of the EU Member States.

Source: The Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information website

pdpEcho on the Data Protection reform in the EU

pdpEcho starts today a category dedicated to the legislative process of the data protection draft regulation and the data protection draft directive, from the EU reform package.

Now that the European Parliament officially released its draft reports on the reform package (see The European Parliament released its reports on the data protection reform package, proposing several changes), we will analyze throughoutly, on an article by article basis, the modifications the EP is proposing for both the legislative acts.

If you are also interested to contribute with ideas and comments on the data protection reform package, send your piece to info@pdpecho.com and it will be published here.

What a surprise (not)! UK's ICO attacks the draft data protection regulation

According to computerweekly.com, Christopher Graham, UK’s Information Commissioner, considers that the proposals for the new European data protection framework are over-engineered and need a lot of work.

In their current form, the proposals are also unaffordable because regulators would need a small army of staff to cope, he told a Westminster eForum seminar in London.

“The draft proposals demand that data protection authorities must impose fines for a whole list of things classified as data breaches, leaving no room for regulators to exercise discretion,” said Graham.

European data protection authorities, he said, would never be able to get enough funding to implement and enforce all the proposals to the letter as they now stand.

“The result would be that they be forced to pick and choose [which to enforce], which would lead to inconsistencies across Europe,” he said.

Many regulations would also not be enforced, he said, leading to less effective data protection regulation for Europe than those currently in place.

“Surely it is possible to get agreement to say instead that data protection authorities mayimpose fines, rather than must,” said Graham.

Read the whole story HERE.