“25 May 2018 will mark an important milestone in the history of data protection with the full application of the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Together with the Data Protection Directive for police and criminal justice authorities, the GDPR will set the standard for personal data processing for many years to come.
Through the GDPR, the EU has lead the way in safeguarding fundamental rights in the digital age. It reinforces the rights of individuals, strengthens legal guarantees and will allow for better and more consistent enforcement of data protection rules through the new European Data Protection Board, for which the EDPS will provide the Secretariat.”, Giovanni Buttarelli, European Data Protection Supervisor
However, the data protection reform package remains incomplete as discussions on the rules applying to electronic communications (the new ePrivacy Regulation) and the EU institutions and bodies are still ongoing.
Also, the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission are currently involved in trilogue negotiations on the new Regulation governing data protection in the EU institutions and bodies. The proposal aims to align the provisions of the current Regulation (EC) 45/2001 with GDPR, to achieve a stronger and more coherent EU data protection framework.
“The co-legislators have, in practice, already reached an agreement on practically all issues related to the alignment of the legal framework for the processing of administrative personal data by all EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies with the GDPR. Though some issues are still formally pending, compromise solutions are in sight, and we appreciate the ongoing effort being made. The main, and almost the only, significant problem concerns the subset of the so-called operational data processed by Europol, Eurojust and EPPO, mentioned above. As I say, this is certainly a point of strategic importance. However, the discussion on operational data is only relevant for a small subset of existing EU institutions and bodies. In other words, unless an institutional agreement is reached in the few coming days, discussions about operational data, which are inevitably complex and difficult and which may require an additional technical exercise, should not become an obstacle to the swift application of the remaining new rules to all other EU institutions, which have now largely been agreed upon by the co-legislators.”, continues Buttarelli.
Stay tuned!
Source: European Data Protection Supervisor - EDPS