Brussels, 20/03/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 20 March, the civil liberties committee at the European Parliament went into close detail, with its presentation of 3,133 amendments to the draft report of Jan-Philip Albrecht (Greens/EFA) on the regulation on personal data protection. The report drafted by Dimitrios Droutsas (S&D), focusing on the directive covering areas of police and legal cooperation, drew more than 670 amendments.
The amendments are varied, reflecting the diversity of the different forces at play, explained the German rapporteur, coming from consumer organisations, for example, which were eager to strengthen citizens' control over their own data and companies, which are keener on simplifying the possibly heavy load of procedures as much as possible.
In addition to the 3,133 amendments to the general regulation alone, there are also “300 to 400 amendments introduced by each committee”, stated Albrecht, such as those at the ITRE, IMCO, EMPL and JURI committees. The rapporteur explained that “we have therefore decided to postpone the LIBE vote until 29 and 30 May” instead of at the end of April.
Albrecht said he was confident that this timetable could be respected: “I think we are on the right track”. He said that the report had triggered a lot of lobbying, from the big companies, as well as from SMEs and consumer rights bodies.
He also explained on Wednesday that the initial aim of the reform of the 1995 rules currently in force is “to get data protection mechanisms genuinely applied everywhere in the EU and not to create new blocks of rights”. Nonetheless, for the rapporteur and his Greek colleague, there is a clear line to be followed and Droutsas explained that “the EP will never go below its current standards, this is an absolute red line”. His group, however, reacted strongly on Tuesday 19 March at the turn of events in some of the committees, the JURI committee, following on from the IMCO and ITRE committees, having thus sacrificed the rights of European citizens, according to Françoise Castex. The composition of the LIBE committee, however, is different and is not expected to allow a trend to develop that is too orientated to one side, explained the rapporteur. In the LIBE committee, the EPP group managed to have several opinions redrafted in secondary committees and did not hesitate in criticising the S&D, which is proposing “absurd and impractical amendments”, according to Hubert Pirker. With these amendments, “each sole trader, every hotel and craft-based company will have to take on a data protection supervisor if they have more than 250 names on their books, even if they're just a plumber”. For this Austrian MEP, this kind of amendment is unrealistic and “will suffocate any entrepreneurial initiative in the EU”. (SP/transl.fl)