On Thursday 17 March, MEPs on the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) discussed the application and implementation of theGeneral Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with several experts.
While a large majority of the MEPs who spoke recognised the importance of the GDPR, a large proportion felt that there was still a lack of harmonisation between Member States.
“It is first and foremost a problem of implementation and enforcement”, said Marina Kaljurand (S&D, Estonia).
“There is a lack of harmonisation of measures”, added Patrick Breyer (Greens/EFA, Germany), suggesting that a single complaint form be made available on the website of each national data protection authority across the EU.
In addition, some MEPs regretted the amount of fines that can be imposed for non-compliance with the GDPR, which they considered too low.
“Facebook was recently fined €17 million, but it only takes one hour and twenty-three minutes to earn that money. I think that the implementation is too weak on the part of the Commission”, said Sophie in 't Veld (Renew Europe, Netherlands).
Finally, the issue of the one-stop shop also came up several times in the discussions.
“There is a lack of goodwill, as we can see in Ireland. There is a lack of transmission of evidence between the different Member States”, insisted Austrian activist and honorary president of the privacy organisation NOYB, Max Schrems (see EUROPE 12866/11).
Several MEPs also questioned the ability of future legislation on digital services (DSA) and markets (DMA) (see EUROPE 12913/20) to fill the existing gaps in the GDPR. In this respect, some of the experts present felt that the future regulations currently being negotiated by the European Parliament and the EU Council contained provisions that could address certain issues, such as dark patterns (see EUROPE 12913/22). (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)