On November 16, 2017 the Belgian Senate adopted an “Act on the Establishment of the Data Protection Authority” (the “Act”). Following Austria, Germany, and the UK, Belgium is the fourth EU Member State to pass a domestic statute implementing the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (“GDPR”) prior to its effective date of 25 May 2018. […]
European Privacy & Cybersecurity
EU DPAs and the Future of Privacy Shield
The Article 29 Working Party group (WP29) of European data protection authorities recently announced that they will legally challenge the adequacy of the Privacy Shield Framework unless the U.S. government addresses certain “prioritized concerns” by May 25, 2018. Privacy Shield provides a framework which helps over 2500+ participating U.S. companies legally transfer EU personal data […]
Challenge to Privacy Shield Dismissed by EU General Court
In October of last year, we reported that digital rights advocacy group Digital Rights Ireland (“DRI”) had brought an action to annul the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield. DRI filed its challenge before the General Court of the European Union, which is the court of first instance in the EU system with exclusive jurisdiction over challenges to […]
An English-Language Primer on Germany’s GDPR Implementation Statute: Part 5 of 5
Over the past year, the German government has been working on legislation to implement the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). On July 6, 2017, Germany did so by passing a statute titled the Data Protection Amendments and Implementation Act. The Act repeals Germany’s venerated Federal Data Protection Act (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz, or BDSG) and replaces it […]
Article 29 Working Party Issues Guidance on Administrative Fines
The Article 29 Working Party (“WP29”) recently issued much-anticipated guidance on administrative sanctions under the General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”). This guidance focuses on the holistic factors which Supervisory Authorities (the “SAs”) are to use in issuing assessments for violations of the GDPR. These factors make clear that WP29 views sanctions issued under the […]