ePrivacy: Croatian Presidency Defers Legislation to German Presidency

In the progress report of the Croatian Presidency of the European Council, it was concluded that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, deliberations on the ePrivacy legislation were rendered impossible. #

Member States could not agree on the text, meaning the Presidency felt further work over a longer period would be necessary to fix the legislation.

As such, it will be up to Germany, who take over the Presidency on 1 July, to advance the ePrivacy legislation as they see fit.

The Croatian presidency did, however, propose a number of revisions to simplify the text of some of the core provisions and to further align them with the GDPR.

Director-General of FEDMA, Mathilde Fiquet, outlines these proposals and Member States' reactions here:

The primary proposal suggested processing and storage capabilities and the collection of information from end-users’ terminals (article 8) should be assigned to terminal equipment when it is necessary for the purpose of legitimate interests.

While FEDMA welcomes this proposal from the Presidency, the safeguards significantly limit the ability of processors to use legitimate interest, thus reducing the added value of the proposal.

Member States reactions to the proposal were mixed:

- A number of Member States would prefer not to include this new ground and would prefer to revert to the previous text with a closed list of permitted processing grounds.

- Others were positive about the new direction of the text trying to align it with the GDPR but warned about the need to keep the right balance between the rights and interests of end-users and those of providers.

- Certain delegations could support going even further in aligning the text to the GDPR. Some also proposed to re-introduce some of the deleted processing grounds back in the text as they were not convinced that those would be adequately covered by legitimate interests, also taking into account all the related safeguards that need to be applied.

- Certain delegations asked for more clarity when it comes to information society services financed through advertising.

The report concludes that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, deliberation were rendered impossible, but it is clear that Member States cannot agree on the text and that further work is needed.

Other priorities of the German Presidency include protecting citizens and freedoms, EU - UK relations, developing its economic base, the European model for the future, and Building a climate-neutral, green, fair and social Europe.