a special supplement to ACC Docket

Interesting in authoring for EMEA Briefings Visit www.accdocket. com/digitaldocket/ edguide.cfm, or contact Associate Editor Joshua Shields at j.shields@acc.com.

1 Top 10 — Europe’s Proposed General Data Protection Regulation By Mark Webber and Leonie Power

4 Uncertainty Abounds as Safe Harbor Collapses By Nic Carter

Top 10 — Europe’s Proposed General
Data Protection Regulation

By Mark Webber ( mark.webber@fieldfisher.com) and Leonie Power ( leonie.power@fieldfisher.com), Field Fisher

This year, it has been increasingly important for in-house counsel to keep tabs on the progress of EU data protection and privacy reform. Europe’s Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC) (the Directive) is now more than 20 years old and, for some time now, the EU’s legislative bodies have been working on a replacement. The overall intent is to update, but also to introduce greater harmonisation of these rules across EU members states. In early June 2015, we learned that the Council of the EU has reached a “general approach” on Europe’s proposed General Data Protection Regulation (the Regulation), with the twin aims of enhancing Europeans’ data protection rights and increasing business opportunities in the Digital Single Market.

The Regulation remains subject
to some significant negotiation and
is unlikely to come into force un-
til 2017–2018. If you represent any
business touching upon personal
data you should start considering the
future rules and what they mean for
your business, not least as there are
potentially some significant changes.

Importantly, the new rules will be implemented by a legal act known as a “Regulation” which, under EU rules, would be “directly applicable” in all EU members states. Effectively this means the members states do not have to implement the rules into their national laws, and they cannot delay or vary the rules coming into effect. The objective is a far more consistent set of rules applying to personal data across the Europen Union.

Like many organizations, the Field-fisher privacy and information team is monitoring the progress of the legislative changes, and we are cautious of recommending any significant preparatory steps until the exact make-up of the final rules are better understood (hopefully in early 2016).