Brussels, 18/04/2012 (Agence Europe) - European regulators in charge of data protection met at the Article 29 Group meeting and expressed their concerns at the beginning of April in a letter addressed to Commissioner Viviane Reding. These concerns involve the cost of the new data protection reforms, presented on 25 January, in addition to the lack of sufficient resources available to the national authorities for carrying out the new tasks included in the reform.
In a letter dated 4 April, the regulators said that the costs generated by this new reform (focusing on police and legal cooperation) have been underestimated and that the national regulatory authorities could possibly find themselves in difficulty when they have to apply the new rules. In their letter, the regulators therefore request the Commission to provide them with a real budgetary evaluation of the proposal.
In order for the national data protection authorities and the European Data Protection Bureau to be able to carry out their tasks efficiently, member states must be committed to providing the necessary financial, human and technical resources, explain the European regulators. Moreover, the proposals by Reding remain too vague with regard to these obligations, explains the Article 29 Group. Without appropriate resources, the regulators explained that the national data protection authorities would be unable to resist pressure exerted on them.
If member states refuse to commit the necessary appropriate resources, the Commission will have to think about revising its objectives downwards and reducing the number of missions assigned to the national authorities, explain the regulators.
The spokesman for Commissioner Viviane Reding, Matthew Newman, informed EUROPE that the proposals made on 25 January clearly called on member states to provide their national authorities with the necessary resources to carry out their tasks and also provided the arguments for these same national authorities to explain their case to their respective governments. The funding of these authorities is ultimately up to the member states and not the Commission, explained the spokesman. He added that the Commission had also helped to reduce the costs of the reform through its one-stop project for companies, which means that they only have to be registered in a single country, which helps more quickly identify the country and the law applicable in litigation cases. (SP/transl.fl)