Member of Parliament since 2009, Birgit Sippel (S&D, Germany) is likely to continue to lead the negotiations for the European Parliament on the confidentiality of electronic communications. On Thursday 5 September, the coordinators of the Civil Liberties Committee validated, without amending it, the list of cases not closed under the previous mandate.
This list, which is about 30 pages long, includes all the dossiers that were not voted on in plenary at first reading and therefore to which the new Members are not theoretically associated. The Conference of Committee Chairs is still due to approve it at the end of September.
The draft regulation on privacy and personal data protection in electronic communications (ePrivacy) was presented by the European Commission in early 2017. The first text addresses the issue of internet cookies and also covers bypass services such as Skype. In Parliament, the former mandate had adopted its position at the end of that year (see EUROPE 11892/6) under the leadership of Birgit Sippel, while a multitude of compromise texts emerged in the EU Council, without achieving a majority (see EUROPE 12306/8). According to our information, Birgit Sippel will meet the Finnish Minister of Communications, Sanna Marin, in charge of the dossier, on 12 September, to discuss this issue. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)