“Privacy and protection are fundamental in the digital world. You cannot have one without the other”, said European Commission Vice-President with responsibility for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip in a note published on the Commission web site on Tuesday 5 September.
He said that the general regulation on data protection, due to come into force on 25 May 2018 (see EUROPE 11795), and the regulation on privacy and electronic communications, presented by the Commission in January 2017 (see EUROPE 11700) and currently being debated by the Council and the Parliament, should come into force at the same time “because this would make life vastly easier for both people and businesses”.
While the data protection regulation applies only to the processing of the personal data of individuals, the proposed new confidentiality rules protect electronic communications as such, no matter whether the personal data are processed or not, he said, underlining that the two texts complement one another.
The commissioner, however, goes further and argues that different dates for the entry into force of the two texts could result in duplication of the rules and differing interpretations by national authorities.
According to the report for an opinion by Axel Voss (EPP, German), to be discussed by the Parliament’s legal affairs committee on Thursday 7 September, it is “impossible” for these texts to come into force simultaneously because of the “complex duplication”. Voss argues that the two texts should be clearly separate. “In the interests of legal certainty, it should be established when one of them applies and when the other does, in order to create a comprehensible legal framework for those responsible”, he says.
Vice-President Ansip’s call comes just as the Estonian Presidency of the Council of the EU has announced that it will be unable to secure an agreement on the draft regulation on privacy and electronic communications and will have to settle for a progress report (see EUROPE 11850). And with the outcome of the vote in the European Parliament civil liberties committee, scheduled for 11 October, looking to be just as uncertain the timing looks to be tight for entry into force in May 2018. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)