Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

On September 8, 2017, the Council of the European Union published its proposed revisions to the draft E-Privacy Regulation (“EPR”), which was first published by the European Commission in January 2016. The revisions have been made based on written comments and discussions involving the Working Party for Telecommunications and Information Society (“WP TELE”) and serve as a discussion for further meetings of the group in late September 2017.

The Council has proposed amendments to the articles, which serve as the operative parts of the EPR, with the recitals due to be examined at a later date. The proposed amendments are without prejudice to any future comments or amendments and the “work on the text will be incremental.” As stated in the introduction to the file note, the main amendments focus on “clarifying certain elements and outlining specific issues to be examined for the purposes of advancing the discussions on the file.”

While the WP TELE’s proposed amendments are not substantive at this stage, they demonstrate its commitment to pushing forward with the legislative process in order to meet the EPR’s ambitious deadline of May 2018.

Earlier this week, the Centre for Information Policy Leadership (“CIPL”) at Hunton & Williams LLP issued a white paper on the Proposal for an ePrivacy Regulation (the “White Paper”), which comments on the European Commission’s proposal to replace and modernize the privacy framework for electronic communications contained in the current ePrivacy Directive and to align it with the EU General Data Protection Regulation.