The changes to be made to the rules on the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector are a long way from consensus, according to the preliminary results of the public consultation on the directive on privacy published by the European Commission on Thursday 4 August. Civil society, for instance, is in favour of rules for over-the-top operators, whilst the industry has misgivings about this.
Directive 2002/58/EC on privacy governs how providers of electronic communication services – such as telecommunications companies and internet service providers – are required to manage the data of their subscribers. It also guarantees rights to subscribers when they use the services. Following an initial revision in 2009 (for instance bringing in new requirements on cookies and violations of personal data), the Commission is getting ready to present modified rules before the end of this year. The aim of this is to take account of the new regulation and directive on the protection of data as well as of technological advancements.
More than 420 stakeholders (a quarter of which came from Germany) responded to the public consultation, which opened on 12 April and ran until 5 July 2016. According to the initial results, the respondents have relatively mixed feelings about the current directive: three quarters of citizens and civil society feel that it has failed to achieve its objectives, whilst the industry and public authorities are more positive. As regards possible changes, citizens and civil society called for specific rules on privacy for electronic communications (83% want rules on confidentiality and 73% on traffic and location data). They also support an extension of the rules to 'over-the-top players' – OTT (76%). The public authorities are very much less inclined to this point of view. The industry is more mixed: just 31% of respondents supported the new rules on confidentiality, 26% the rules on traffic and 42% take the view that the regulation in question should not be rolled out to OTT.
Civil society and the industry are also opposed to the question of cookies: the former feel that service providers should not be allowed to block access to their service if users choose not to store identifiers and the latter are opposed to this. On the implementation of the rules, most respondents from the industry and civil society take the view that a single national authority should be responsible for monitoring, whilst public bodies feel that this is unnecessary.
The European Commission will publish a definitive version of the results to its public consultation in the autumn, alongside its legislative proposal. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)