European Union Member States have identified the protection of trade secrets, the rules relating to the ‘ePrivacy’ directive and cookies, as well as the reporting of cyber incidents, as the main issues still outstanding in the discussions on the ‘Digital Omnibus’ package aiming to simplify the ‘GDPR’ and the Data Act (see EUROPE 13747/1), according to an EU Council note seen by Agence Europe.
Germany, alongside other Member States such as Portugal, Italy, Austria, Spain and France, wants to strengthen the protection of trade secrets under the Data Act, a European source explained to Agence Europe.
As regards the rules relating to cookies, 13 Member States, including Germany, Poland, France, Sweden, Austria, the Baltic States, Luxembourg, Spain, Czechia, Croatia and Greece, want this issue to be dealt with outside the ‘Digital Omnibus’ package.
As for the reporting of cyber incidents, several Member States reject the European Commission’s proposal to create a European single access point at Union level, managed by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA). They cite the complexity of such a system and the potential risks that such a single entry point could pose for the security of information systems and for national security.
The latest compromise proposal from the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the EU (see EUROPE 13877/5), supported by more than a dozen Member States, including Germany, France, Spain, Sweden and Luxembourg, provides for ENISA to set up an information point on incident reporting while giving Member States flexibility to establish national entry points for incident reporting, provided that these systems are interoperable, in order to facilitate cross-border notifications in future. Meanwhile, Estonia has proposed developing a common open-source solution.
The next discussion on this dossier will take place at working party level on Monday 15 June. The Cyprus Presidency still intends to finalise an EU Council negotiating mandate at the level of the ambassadors of the 27 Member States to the EU before the end of June. (Original version in French by Ana Pisonero Hernández)