At the beginning of June the EU Council discussed its position on the ePrivacy Regulation to update privacy rules for electronic communications. It appears like no real progress was registered at the Council meeting and that further work is needed under the next presidency (June to December 2018).
The ePrivacy Regulation aims at ensuring a high level of protection of private life, communications and personal data in the electronic communications sector, to create a “level playing field for providers of various services”, as well as to ensure free movement of electronic communications data and services in the EU.
During the Council’s debate, ministers generally stressed the need to provide legal certainty for SMEs and other businesses.
The Council also acknowledged that the relationship between ePrivacy and the general data protection directive (GDPR) still needs to be clarified. Several delegations mentioned the need to “ensure a level playing field among different service providers. This includes avoiding a situation in which the same data would be subject to different rules depending on who is processing them (i.e. ePrivacy imposing stricter obligations on providers of communications services than the GDPR on other entities).”
The legislative procedure of the regulation proposal (Procedure 2017/0003/COD – COM (2017) 10 is available at https://eur-lex.europa.eu…
A progress report on the technical discussions within the Council is available here
A regulation proposal of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the respect for private life and the protection of personal data in electronic communications and repealing Directive 2002/58/EC (Regulation on Privacy and Electronic Communications) is available here
More on the ePrivacy Regulation is available at http://www.technethics.com…
Originally published on Technethics in June 2018