Data protection package delayed after the Euro elections

The EU’s much discussed data protection package will not be adopted
before the elections for the European Parliament which are due in May 2014.

“They have elaborated a road map and now they need to deliver on it
basically but I think the political agreement to get this done before
the end of the year is there,” Reding’s spokesperson Mina Andreeva told
EUObserver.

German Green MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht has explained that the timetable
aims at a mandate for negotiations in June and the beginning of
inter-instutitional negotiations in July.

Several member states, such as UK, Denmark, Hungary and Slovenia, have
delayed the discussions in the Council wanting to downgrade the Data
Protection Regulation in a directive.

But the debates at the CPDP shown a much bleaker image. The Polish
DPA Wojciech Wiewiorowski said directly in one of the panels that “the
reform package is not really moving.” Moreover, he insisted that, due to
the blockade in the Council, several allies to the data protection
package could change their mind. Thus, without a strong political
support, a regulation on data protection could be delayed until 2020, in
the worst case scenario.

Despite the European Commission’s press release on the data protection
day that sees a “Full Speed on EU Data Protection Reform”, the civil
society has called the progress “painfully slow, in part due to efforts
by certain member states – namely Germany and the U.K. – to obstruct
negotiations.”

Thus, in a letter sent to the European Council on International Data
Privacy Day, 28 January 2014, several NGOs, including EDRi explained
that “this dragging of feet has direct, negative impact on European
citizens’ rights, as they’re exposed daily to online fraud, data mining
and corporate profiling, and exposure of their personal data to
countries with inadequate legal protections.

While the passage of the Data Protection Regulation is not the ultimate
or only solution, it is a critical part of the broad reform required to
achieve better protections of fundamental rights.”

EU data bill delayed until after May elections (14.01.2014)
http://euobserver.com/justice/122853

Data Protection Day 2014: Full Speed on EU Data Protection Reform
(27.01.2014)
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-14-60_en.htm

A data protection compact for Europe (28.01.2014)
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-14-62_en.htm

International Data Privacy Day: We remind the European Council of our
rights (28.01.2014)
https://www.accessnow.org/blog/2014/01/28/international-data-privacy-day-we-remind-the-european-council-of-our-rights