In late 2015, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) issued its initial Schrems decision, invalidating the EU/US Safe Harbor and leading to important developments in the rules for transferring personal data from the EU to the US. Since that decision, Mr. Schrems has pursued two further legal proceedings in the EU. The first involves Mr. Schrems’ challenge in […]
EU Data Protection
ePrivacy Regulation Trilogue Negotiations Pushed back to Fall 2018; Final ePrivacy Regulation may not be in Place until 2020
About this time last January, the European Parliament released its proposal for a new ePrivacy Regulation. The intent of the ePrivacy Regulation is to replace the current ePrivacy regime – which consists of an ePrivacy Directive and a patchwork of local implementing legislation – with a uniform set of directly-applicable EU-wide rules. Since the Parliament […]
Data Protection Litigation to Become a New Reality in Belgium
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. […]
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 […]