The legislative proposal on data governance will be at the heart of the informal meeting of the EU Member States’ Telecommunications Ministers, which will be held by videoconference on Monday 7 December and is expected to close in the early afternoon.
E-Privacy Progress Report
At the beginning of its term of office, however, the German Presidency was counting on this meeting to achieve a general approach by the EU Council on the draft regulation on the confidentiality of electronic communications (e-Privacy).
However, its proposals, in particular the idea of removing legitimate interest among the legal bases allowing processing of metadata without consent, were considered too extreme by several delegations.
Consequently, Berlin will limit itself to presenting a progress report to the Telecommunications Ministers, thus passing the torch to the future Portuguese Presidency of the Council on this dossier, which aims to replace the current Directive on the confidentiality of electronic communications to cover calling or instant messaging services such as WhatsApp (see EUROPE 11700/1, 12607/12).
Data Governance Act
In the absence of progress, it will be the latest proposal on data governance that will occupy EU ministers.
This text, presented on 25 November, aims to encourage the flow of data between sectors and between countries. Specifically, the proposal seeks to: - improve the re-use of public sector data that cannot be made available as open data under Directive 2019/1024; - introduce common principles for data intermediaries; - encouraging altruism with regard to data (see EUROPE 12599/9).
However, given the limited time available to delegations, the discussion is likely to remain relatively superficial.
Other items on the agenda
For the rest, the German Presidency will inform delegations of the progress of the ongoing discussions on the other legislative initiatives. It will refer to the draft regulation introducing a temporary derogation from the e-Privacy rules to allow online communication service providers to detect child sexual abuse content, a draft on which the Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties is due to vote on 7 December (while the EU Council has already decided - see EUROPE 12592/20).
It will also inform delegations about the progress of the trilogues on the ‘Digital Europe’ programme and the centre of competence (see separate article). Poland will speak, on behalf of ten delegations, on the Directive on the revision of the legal framework on network security (NIS Directive 2016/1148).
Finally, Member States will be invited to co-sign a declaration on a European initiative on microelectronics. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)