Google, Facebook and other US tech giants have won an important victory against EU efforts to restrict the sharing of customer data after UK Prime Minister David Cameron persuaded the bloc to postpone the introduction of tougher privacy rules by at least a year. This is a blow to advocates of stricter data protection standards, especially as it comes amid an international scandal that has seen the US accused of snooping on EU leaders.
Lawmakers in the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee recently voted to strengthen Europe’s data protection laws.
The vote in Parliament’s civil liberties committee opened the way for further negotiations with EU countries and the European Commission on the plans, the first revision to Europe’s data laws since 1995.
In its legislative proposal unveiled in early 2012, the Commission suggested sanctions of up to two per cent of global turnover on companies that violate the rules, and said consumers should have the “right to be forgotten” – that they should be able to remove their entire digital traces from the Internet.
The Parliament’s civil liberties committee has come up with nearly 4,000 amendments to the original plan, including increasing the fine to five per cent of annual worldwide turnover or €100 million, whichever is greater.
The changes also mean the replacement of the “right to be forgotten” with “the right of erasure”, seen as a lesser obligation as it would be impossible to entirely remove someone’s traces from the Internet.
The regulation on data in the European Union will establish, when finalised, a single, pan-European law for data protection, replacing the current inconsistent patchwork of national laws.
Parliament, in line with the Commission’s proposals, also wants to impose strict rules on how data is shared or transferred to non-EU countries. For example, if the US wants access to information held by Google or Yahoo! about a European citizen based in Europe, the firm would have to seek authorisation from a European data authority first.
That would establish an extra, EU-controlled gateway that might go some way to assuaging the profound concerns raised in Europe about US data spying activities recently revealed via the leaks from former US data analyst Edward Snowden.
Unfortunately, the proposed EU data protection law has been postponed for an indefinite time. This is a serious drawback to EU citizens’ rights on data privacy.