Tag: Data Protection Regulation

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled in the Schrems case, finding that the Safe Harbour mechanism is invalid. Safe Harbour is a transatlantic data transfer mechanism enabling US companies to send data collected in the EU to the US.

In an open letter sent today to Commissioner Malmström, Access requests the Commissioner-designate for Trade for immediate feedback on the aspersions she placed on the validity of the acquired document during yesterday’s hearing in the European Parliament.

The former Home Affairs Commissioner has been systematically undermining the work of her own commission, and would be unfit to defend EU citizens’ interests as Trade Commissioner.

On May 13th, the European Court of Justice ruled on the case between the Spanish citizen, Mario Costeja González and Google Spain, regarding the Spanish Data Protection Authority requests for the search engine to withdraw personal data relating to Mr Costeja González from its index and to prevent access to the data in the future.

Yesterday, in a sweeping and dangerous judgement the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Google should de-index a lawfully published newspaper article about a Spanish citizen. Access believes the Court erred in increasing liability for intermediaries online, unnecessarily and wrongly pitting privacy against access to information, with an unfavorable result.

Today, the European Parliament adopted the Data Protection Regulation and Directive, commonly referred to as the Data Protection Reform Package (DPR). This vote represents another crucial step towards protecting European user data and the completion of the long-awaited reform proposed by the European Commission back in January 2012.

Today we celebrated the 33rd International Data Privacy Day by reminding members of the Council of the E.U. representatives of their obligation to protect the rights of European citizens. We sent a letter, signed by several European and International NGOs, outlining the importance of the rights to privacy and data protection and urging them to reach a conclusion on the General Data Protection Regulation without any further delay.

Last Thursday, Europe’s top privacy watchdogs stepped down at the conclusion of their terms. This week, the European Commission has yet to name a successor for its most important privacy posts. At a time when the European Union is actively considering landmark privacy legislation and simultaneously responding to the Snowden mass surveillance revelations, this is at best a shocking oversight and at worst a deliberate attempt to undermine Europeans’ privacy rights.

On the 65th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the celebration of UN Human Rights day, we would like to take this opportunity to reflect upon the importance of privacy and data protection as key pillars of healthy societies.