On Tuesday 6 October, the Telecommunications Working Group of the EU Council re-examined the proposal for an interim regulation allowing online communication services to derogate from the privacy rules contained in the ‘e-Privacy’ Directive. The EU-27 were invited to vote on three working options submitted by the German Presidency.
As a reminder, this proposal, presented on 10 September, aims to counter the effects of the new Electronic Communications Code (see EUROPE 12557/13). It should enable providers of online communication services to continue to detect and report child sexual abuse content on a voluntary basis.
In its working document, as seen by EUROPE, the rotating Presidency of the EU Council has submitted several options to the Member States.
Option 1 proposes to accept the proposal as it stands, which would have the advantage - provided that the European Parliament does the same - of leading to a rapid adoption of the text.
Option 2 suggests a clarification of the purpose of the interim Regulation (Article 1), with an explicit reference to the General Data Protection Regulation.
Option 3 puts forward targeted changes to the scope of the derogation (Article 3), in particular to the technologies concerned (Article 3a) and to the provider’s annual report (Article 3e).
Specifically, the German Presidency proposes that the interim regulation should not be limited to “well-established technologies that were in regular use before the entry into force“ of the regulation. In its view, “it is not clear why new technologies that would be both state-of-the-art and less privacy-invasive than existing technologies should not be covered”. The German Presidency further suggests that providers should send their annual reports to the data protection authorities and asks delegations whether it would be appropriate to change the frequency of such reports. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)