This week the EU proposed a major overhaul of its data protection. As the largest trading bloc in the world, what the EU thinks about data matters. Here’s a summary that my firm, Osborne Clarke, prepared:
All organisations hold and process personally identifiable data – not least about their staff, customers or suppliers, or all three. In Europe how this data is handled has been regulated by data protection laws since the early 1980s. Those already complex laws are set to be shaken up by the European Commission (EC) which on 25 January 2012 announced a radical overhaul of the Data Protection Directive.If adopted the changes will have a huge impact on all organisations with European facing operations, as will the suggested penalties for those who get it wrong. Large fines (up to 2% of global turnover have been proposed) are being lined up for local regulators to impose on non-compliant organisations.
Continue reading A quick guide to the EU data protection proposals