The rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union intends to put the confidentiality of electronic communications on the agenda of the meeting of the national ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) on 22 November.
The Finnish Presidency, which communicated this information to the Member States on Tuesday 5 November, hopes to move the dossier from the technical to the political level with a view to reaching agreement at the Telecommunications Council of the EU on 3 December. For this to happen, it plans to present a new compromise text on 8 November, after the meeting of the Working Party the day before. It has also planned for follow-up technical discussions on 12 and 14 November (see EUROPE 12351/8).
Three years of discussion
The task is not simple: the matter has been discussed for almost three years in the EU Council, without success. It touches on sensitive issues, namely the confidentiality of online exchanges, including via bypass operators such as Skype or WhatsApp (EUROPE 11700/1). According to our information, the Portuguese, Lithuanian, Polish, Czech and Italian delegations, led by France, are among the main opponents to the dossier. Belgium and Luxembourg are not very enthusiastic either. But the Commission's continued support for its text, public pressure following the many scandals over the use of personal data, as well as the recent elections in Italy and in Portugal and the absence of a government in Belgium, could make it possible to adopt the text.
The latest version of the text
The main difficulties concern the level of protection to be granted to users, already covered by the General Data Protection Regulation (2016/679). The version on which the EU Council is working introduces more legal bases for data processing than what the European Commission proposed or what the European Parliament is considering.
The technical meeting on 7 November will be based on yet another Finnish draft compromise (see EUROPE 12362/9). This text puts forward several options on the issue of 'scope' (and the issue of data storage) as well as on the concept of ‘third party' (the distinction to be made in relation to service providers).
According to a European diplomat interviewed earlier this week, at this stage, "the main challenges remain the sections on child pornography, scope and cookies".
Latest compromise text: http://bit.ly/33lSXY8 (Sophie Petitjean)