The Finnish Presidency of the Council of the EU is proposing a "temporary solution" to the fight against child pornography in order to unblock discussions on the draft regulation on the confidentiality of electronic communications. This is reflected in a new draft compromise dated 26 July, which will be discussed in the Telecommunications working party on 9 September.
Negotiations on this text - which addresses the issue of Internet cookies and also covers bypass services such as Skype (see EUROPE 11700/1) - are treading in the EU Council. Member States do not agree on the degree of protection that users should enjoy.
One of the difficulties concerns Article 6 on the processing of data and metadata and derogations from the principle of consent. In its second compromise text since 1 July, Helsinki suggests dividing this article into four parts to "simplify" the text, according to what the Finnish expert Maija Rönkä published on her Twitter account: data, content, metadata processing and subsequent metadata processing. To resolve the conflict between Member States that want to include the fight against child pornography in Article 6 and those that want to include it in Article 11 (restrictions), the Finnish Presidency of the EU Council has chosen another alternative: to include this issue in Article 29 on entry into force and the application.
Other changes include a clarification in recital 15 on the concept of anonymisation (i.e. the absence of the possibility of identifying a natural or legal person) or a rewording of the title of Article 14 to read "Unwanted, malicious or annoying calls".
The meeting on 9 September will focus on Articles 5 to 7, namely the principle of data confidentiality, authorised processing and storage/deletion of data resulting from electronic communications. It could also address Articles 8 (protection of the device) and 10 (configuration of the device), time permitting. See the draft compromise on page https://bit.ly/2K0l33F (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)