EU: First Draft of Revised Data Protection Directive end of January 2012?

Category: Nachrichten
By: M. Schröder - 2B Advice GmbH - the privacy benchmark

The first draft of the revised Data Protection Directive 95/46 EC is set to be published at the end of January 2012 according to a statement from the responsible commissioner, Viviane Reding. The Vice President of the European Union, Ms. Viviane Reding, and German Federal Consumer Protection Minister, Ms. Ilse Aigner, commented in a press statement that the revised data protection directive should provide consumers with a powerful medium to protect their data.

Together, Ms. Reding and Ms. Aigner emphasized that European data protection regulations must also be complied with by companies that are not based in Europe, but who nonetheless offer their services to European consumers. This applies especially to operators of social networks and cloud services. In future, a mandatory prerequisite for processing consumers' personal data shall be the express consent to process such data. Furthermore, consumers should be able to delete data autonomously at any time. This shall apply especially to data that they themselves have posted on the Internet.

 

Should the announced rights be drawn up in a draft proposal, companies would have to consider how to apply the standards in practice. If the user is to be granted the "autonomous" right to delete data uploaded by him/herself onto the Internet, Online services will have to provide for an effective deletion procedure, which the user of the service can initiate. The question as to what should happen with copies that were made by third parties in the meantime also remains unresolved, however, at this point. Should the deletion claim also refer to this data, this shall necessitate a justified legal claim against these third parties to be effective.

 

The German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG), according to § 1 Subsection 5 Page 2 of the BDSG, is currently applicable if the responsible entity collects, processes, or uses data domestically and does not have a registered office in the EU (Article 4 No. 1, Letter (c) Directive 95/46/EC). In the past, it has proven difficult to pursue claims against companies based outside of the EU. It seems unlikely, that there may be a possibility in the future to "ban" such companies from the European market on the basis of data protection violations. It will be interesting to see whether Ms. Reding and Ms. Aigner's wish that "anyone who does not comply should not be allowed to do business in our single market" becomes a reality.

 

Furhter information:

 

europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do

 

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