MEPs are beginning to lose patience over the Council of the EU's indecision on the draft regulation on privacy and electronic communications, as witnessed by the faces and sighs of Birgit Sippel (S&D, Germany), rapporteur, before the German telecommunications expert, at the annual conference on privacy and data protection on Wednesday 20 March.
Two years and still nothing on the Council of the EU
For more than 2 years, Member States have been discussing this proposal, which aims to strengthen the confidentiality of online exchanges – including via circumventing operators – while allowing access to personal data in the event of prior user consent (see EUROPE 11700/1). “The Council of the EU tries to do its work in good faith. But we are not there yet”, said German Permanent Representation Attaché Robert Dehm, after ironically stating that things will certainly be unblocked under the German Presidency, adding more seriously: “we should take our decision in the coming months” (see EUROPE 12216/9).
Sighs from Birgit Sippel, who has replaced the Estonian Marju Lauristin as rapporteur on this dossier in Parliament. “My impression is that the Council of the EU is circumventing the issue to avoid making a decision”, she commented.
Substantive issues
Speakers attempted, during the session, to raise some substantive issues. In particular, they talked about cookie walls, a system whereby a service denies access to a user who does not consent to the processing of his data and which Parliament, in its negotiating mandate, suggested should be prohibited (see EUROPE 11887/8). Ms Sippel therefore welcomed the decision of the Dutch data protection authority to ban this practice on 7 March.
For his part, the German attaché said: “If it was only about cookie walls, we would have succeeded last year already”. The difficulties, he said, were more related to monitoring the implementation of the text and the issue of combating child pornography. According to the American media Politico, several Member States (Ireland, the United Kingdom and Germany) would argue that the new regulation would prevent them from fighting this scourge, following the arguments put forward by Facebook. According to Diego Naranjo, of the digital freedom organisation EDRi, this is an easy argument: “Some advice, if you want to be political: invoke the fight against terrorism or child pornography and you will have your hands free”, while the Commission, accused of not having expressed an unequivocal opinion on this issue (disagreements between DG Home Affairs and DG Connect), stressed that the future regulation did not prevent Member States from prosecuting child pornography offenders.
Robert Dehm also referred to the impact of the future regulation on new modes of communication, such as machine-to-machine (M2M) communications: these communications, they point out, will be affected by Article 6 on authorised data processing and also by Article 8 on device protection, which makes things more complex. Concerns also expressed by Jeremy Rollison (Microsoft Europe), who stressed the need for stability and clarity for companies.
The discussion concluded with an extended hand from Parliament to the Member States: “There is no reason to slow down the pace of work due to the European elections. I am ready to start the trilogues at any time with the Council of the EU, as soon as it has decided on its position”, said Birgit Sippel. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)