Divided e-Privacy vote demonstrates lack of Parliament debate

Today, the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) Committee in the European Parliament narrowly voted its e-Privacy report through. This demonstrated its fragmented position before Council negotiations.

BusinessEurope Director General Markus J. Beyrer said: “This vote represents a lost opportunity for the European Parliament to send a clear message on its willingness to enhance trust and confidentiality in electronic communications. BusinessEurope has continually called for greater time to be allowed to discuss such an all-encompassing and complex topic and to bring all stakeholders closer together, but today, speed over quality has prevailed.”

BusinessEurope supports an update in this policy area that would actually enhance trust and confidentiality in a proportionate, legally certain, robust and tech-neutral manner. The e-Privacy Regulation should also compliment not contradict the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). “LIBE’s report continues to contradict the GDPR in a number of areas putting its objective of becoming an international gold standard in data privacy law at risk. It even duplicates areas to confusingly create a separate track of law that will further complicate business compliance.”

While we understand the European Parliament aims to achieve the Commission’s objective of enabling the e-Privacy Regulation to enter into application in May 2018 along with the GDPR, we do not believe this should come at the expense of disproportionate and legally uncertain legislation.

See more details in our public letter and position paper.