European Commission

The Imitation Game

April 25, 2015, Categories EU General Data Protection Regulation, European Commission, European Parliament No comments

In the media this week there’s been a fair amount of speculation as to when the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is likely to see the light of day. Some commentators are speculating that sign-off by the European Parliament, Council of Ministers and the European Commission won’t happen until Spring 2016.

Earlier this year, a joint statement by EC vice president Andrus Ansip and EU Commissioner Věra Jourová indicated that GDPR could become law by the end of 2015. Perhaps this was wishful thinking?

And this week, some 60 pressure groups including the UK’s Open Rights Group, Liberty, the Dutch Consumer Council and US Electronic Privacy Information Centre have wr...

Europe’s Digital Czar criticises Facebook’s electronic vacuum cleaner approach to data collection

March 1, 2015, Categories EU General Data Protection Regulation, News No comments

Guenther Oettinger, Europe’s digital economy chief and the German representative on the European Commission has delivered a stark warning to Google and Facebook that they must either comply with the principles of the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or face being thrown out of the single market.

Oettinger accused the tech giants of using “an electronic vacuum cleaner” to collect and then target advertising using detailed information of users often without their knowledge or consent.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Oettinger said: “The Americans are in the lead, they’ve got the data, the business models and so the power.”

He predicted t...

Delays in agreeing wording of EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is “bad for democracy”

January 10, 2015, Categories News, Social marketing practice No comments

Impatience with the progress of the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is starting to grow within the European Union.

A recent joint declaration adopted by representatives of the German, Austrian, Belgian, Croatian, French, Greek, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Luxembourg, Dutch, Portuguese, Czech, Romanian, UK, Slovakian and Swedish parliaments called on European legislators to adopt the GDPR “by 2015”.

German Green MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht, vice chairman of the civil liberties committee at the European Parliament warned this week that failure to agree on the new security and data protection rules was “bad for democracy” as this left European citizens exposed...