Who: Council of the European Union
Where: European Union
When: 27 November 2019
Law stated as at: 3 December 2019
What happened:
The ePrivacy Regulation, which is intended to replace The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (PECR), has not received sufficient support to be finalised before the end of 2019.
The draft ePrivacy Regulation was originally planned to come into place at the same time as the GDPR and has been through 10 proposals in the past six months under the Finnish presidency. The most recent text was due to be presented on 3 December 2019 to adopt a general approach. However, that approach did not receive sufficient support in the European Economic and Social Committee. That means it’s back to the drawing board in 2020 under the Croatian presidency.
From an advertising and marketing perspective, one key area of contention is the protection of information stored on a device (such as a mobile phone); particularly in the context of ad-financed websites and whether, in those circumstances, GDPR-grade consent should be required for the use of advertising cookies or whether some kind of “acceptance” should suffice.
Why this matters:
Following the recent update to cookies and the GDPR generally, many businesses have been looking forward to understanding the changes required by the new ePrivacy Regulation in order to streamline its systems and better understand how to be compliant. The current regime, PECR, is outdated and businesses are struggling to balance obligations between PECR and the GDPR.
You can find out more about this setback here.
