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3/15/15

European Data Protection: EU Ministers upset businesses with new data protection rules

The European Union's interior and justice ministers agreed on Friday to grant more powers to regulators to enforce a new data protection law, upsetting businesses who hoped the power would instead be devolved to the regulators in each individual country.

Initially, the new EU law would have established a "one-stop-shop" mechanism, meaning that a business operating across the whole 28-nation bloc would only have to deal with one protection authority - in the country where it has its headquarters or European base, even if the issue affected citizens in another EU country.

However, this upset some countries which do not what their national authorities to lose all jurisdiction over big technology companies like Apple and Facebook, which are based in Ireland. In the past, Ireland has been accused of going soft on large multinationals in order to remain an attractive place for doing business, something Dublin has denied.

Under pressure from the concern nations, the EU ministers agreed that henceforth if one country's authority is "concerned," they can appeal any ruling to an as-yet-uncreated board of all 28 regulators who could then come to a binding decision.

Read more: EU Ministers upset businesses with new data protection rules | News | DW.DE | 13.03.2015

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