Schrems-II and ePrivacy Regulation: beautiful mess?

It may occasionally seem that the EU laws look like a chicken with its head cut-off.

It’s been more than half year since Schrem-II substantially changed privacy world, with succinct EDPB FAQ issued a week later and controversial Recommendations 01/2020 still stuck at the stage of public consultations and leaving more questions than answers, especially for businesses operating globally.

A recent agreement (after how many reiterations?) on ePrivacy Regulation resembles a Christmas that does not really make happy as it raised clear concerns among privacy community and received a plenty of negative feedbacks, with this from the German Federal Commissioner probably being the most rampant. Surely, the deadlock has been broken, and this is undoubtedly a huge progress and achievement that should not be underestimated (regardless of any criticism voiced). At the same time, there is obviously a long way to go to reach true reconciliation.

Going back to Schrem-II stalemate, my impression is that many companies took a ‘wait and see’ approach, while taking careful first steps and probably nervously waiting for possible first cases of detected non-compliance in the industry. If you want to briefly recap on what’s happened in this realm since July 2020, here it is from IAPP.

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2 Replies to “Schrems-II and ePrivacy Regulation: beautiful mess?”

  1. The ‘wait and see’ reminds me of the period before the GDPR was finalised. Even though there was a draft document since 2014, which gave organisations loads to work with and prepare upto 4 years in advance…. many wanted to ‘wait and see’ instead of working with what we know, and then taking the unknowns later.

    Hate to say this Konstantin, but I do find legal guys very cautious, and behind the ‘wait and see’, because the business will clearly follow advice of legal.

    The exceptions I found, were when I was engaged by a legal guy who worked in certain industry secotrs e.g. pharma… they didn’t ‘wait and see’ they engaged me -or Privasee- in 2016.

    1. I agree that legal guys are often very cautious. But it varies greatly from company to company. The weaker and the more limited their position in a company is – the more cautious they are. I mean, cautiousness is not always a personal quality, it can stem from other things. Generally, it is a good topic for a separate discussion 🙂

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