Monday 11 February 2013

Level-playing field

Today the Vice-President of the European Commission, Viviane Reding, is meeting with the chairmen of the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO), Luigi Gambardella, to discuss the forthcoming changes to the EU Data Protection rules. (Major Telecoms Operators Support Push for Level-Playing Field) This meeting is quite important, since in previous years whenever the European Commission proposed a new law concerning privacy or data protection issues, the lobbyists representing the telecommunication sector managed to heavily influence further works on these draft laws (e.g., by insisting on changing opt-in system with regards to acceptance of cookies to opt-out system). At the moment, it seems that the main concern of the telecommunication sector is making sure that the new rules would apply equally to companies from outside of and from the EU, as long as they operate on the EU market.