Brussels, 29/05/2015 (Agence Europe) - Meeting on the evening of Thursday 28 May for a debate on the reform of the European rules on the protection of personal data, the competent ministers of Germany (Thomas de Maizière), France (Christiane Taubira) and Luxembourg (Mr Braz), and the European Commissioner Vera Jourova, expressed their confidence that an agreement can be reached in Luxembourg on 15 June on the data protection regulation, to replace the directive of the same name from 1995. This will allow trialogue negotiations with the EP to begin (see EUROPE 11273).
Meeting for discussions arranged by the bureau of the representation of Bavaria to Brussels, the four stressed that this agreement was close at hand. “We are in the home straight and hope to conclude”, commented de Maizière. “We are on the way to a general agreement. The text is not yet complete, but it is good”, added Taubira. Braz, said that the forthcoming Luxembourg Presidency of the Council would spare no efforts to finalise this reform, “with no fewer than eight technical meetings scheduled, to conclude by the end of 2015”. The German minister said that he was optimistic that the finalisation of this reform, which was launched in January 2012, “would be under the Christmas tree, with successful trialogues on the regulation and the directive, and possibly also even on Safe Harbour”.
On this subject, Jourova said that she was waiting for the United States to respond, by the end of June, to the concerns raised by the EU following the NSA scandal (see EUROPE 11294). In 2013, the Commission submitted 13 recommendations to improve this mechanism on the transfer of personal data to American commercial businesses such as Google and Facebook, but the United States have not yet set all of them in place.
The French justice minister said on Thursday, however, that, once finalised, the regulation currently being adopted on data protection will “make a revision of Safe Harbour necessary”.
On the content of the negotiations, the justice ministers have already validated several partial approaches to the general regulation and, in particular, the principles (such as user consent) and the dispute settlement mechanism (one-stop shop).
The discussions also covered elements related to the rules for the public sector, transfer to third countries or the obligations of data controllers. Since March, the experts have also been discussing the chapters on the so-called right to be forgotten or sanctions and compensations for users. There is still a considerable amount of work to be done on chapter 1 (definitions), chapter 3 (principles), the right to deletion (rather than the right to be forgotten, the motto of Viviane Reding in 2012), the Latvian Presidency of the EU explained in a note. In any event, the ministers and the Czech commissioner on Thursday all welcomed Riga's commitment to moving this dossier forward.
However, an agreement of the Council on the treatment of personal data in a police and judicial framework is by no means certain, as the directive still needs a bit of work. (Solenn Paulic)