Brussels, 03/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 2 April, the data protection authorities of six European countries (Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) announced their intention of undertaking a concerted action for prohibition against the American giant, Google, which has still not complied with the request regarding confidentiality made by the CNIL, the French authority which heads up the “article 29” group comprising the authorities of the EU27 (see EUROPE 10788).
On a number of occasions, most recently in an injunction of October of last year, the CNIL has asked Google to change, within four months, its new “privacy” rules which entered into force in March 2012, and several aspects of which run counter to the 1995 European directive on the protection of personal data. Acting on behalf of all of the European regulators, the CNIL criticised Google, among other things, for not providing internet users with sufficient information on the use of their data, particularly as these are used across all of Google's services (YouTube, Gmail, Google+, etc).
The American group has failed to act on this request, taking the view that its rules are adequate and easier for internet users to understand. At the end of this period of four months, “Google has adopted no concrete measures”, the French authority stated on Monday, reports AFP. Representatives of Google met the experts of these six countries on 19 March by request of the American group, but “once again, no change has been implemented following this meeting”, the CNIL stresses (our translations).
This action for prohibition will concern only the six countries in question, which will be acting by virtue of their national provisions. The forthcoming reform to be engineered by the European Commissioner for Justice, Viviane Reding, aims precisely to ensure that a single authority can adopt a measure on behalf of all others and that the sanction decided upon will apply uniformly across all countries concerned.
At this point in the proceedings, the action for prohibition announced by the CNIL will take the form only of investigations or checks, but fines have not been ruled out in certain member states.
Reding welcomed the fact that six national data protection authorities have come together to enforce Europe's data protection rules. She believes that such actions should go from being the exception to being the rule. This change, she explains, is the whole point of the Commission's reform plans. Via its “Civil Liberties” committee, the European Parliament is due to take position on the issue at the end of May and the Council may also give its agreement in principle in June, so that the reform can be the subject of a consensus before the end of 2013, as the commissioner hopes.
“Competition” plank: procedure is in train. In parallel to this action brought by the privacy authorities, Google is also the subject of an investigation by the European competition authorities which has been going on since 2010. Amongst other things, they are concerned that the company may be abusing its dominant position by systematically pushing its own specialist search engines to the fore, copying the contents of rival search engines and banning its advertisers from advertising on other search engines, on pain of various punishments. As recently as last week, the Financial Times carried the story of a study commissioned by Microsoft, showing that Google systematically puts its own travel or purchasing cost comparison systems at the top of the search results compared to those of its rivals.
The Commission is currently assessing whether the proposals made by Google in January to remedy these practices and reach an amicable agreement with it are likely to satisfy its injured rivals and appease its concerns (see EUROPE 10762). If this was the case, it would convert them into legally binding commitments upon the company and close the investigation with an amicable settlement. (FG/transl.fl)