The reform of the rules on the confidentiality of electronic communications will, in the end, be on the agenda of the Telecommunications Council of the EU on 3 December, in the form of a progress report and not a general approach, as envisaged by Helsinki. On Friday 22 November, the Deputy Ambassadors refused the latest Finnish compromise proposal (see EUROPE 12371/27).
According to our information, 14 Member States voted against the text (including France and Italy), 9 in favour and 1 abstained on this text, which is supposed to represent the EU Council's negotiating position vis-à-vis the European Parliament. In addition, three did not take the floor.
The legislative proposal was presented in early 2017 to modernise a 2002 directive on the subject and to include online messaging or call services (OTT) such as WhatsApp or Viber (as opposed to up until now just telecommunications operators).
In turn, the rotating Presidencies of the Council of the EU had amended it to introduce new jurisdiction bases for the legal processing of user data. The latest version prepared by the Finnish Presidency thus introduced a new database for data, linked to the fight against child pornography or further processing compatible with the initial objective for metadata (Article 6). It also deleted the provisions on privacy settings through the browser (Article 10).
It remains to be seen how Croatia, which will hold the rotating presidency of the EU Council, intends to deal with this issue and whether the von der Leyen Commission will continue to support it.
In any case, Germany's Birgit Sippel (S&D), rapporteur in the European Parliament on the dossier, regretted this rejection. She told EUROPE that she would argue for consistent application of the existing law and that she would ask the European Commission to initiate infringement proceedings against Member States that have incorrectly transposed the 2002 Directive. "My home country, Germany, should be the first to be brought before the Court of Justice", she added. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)