New European Data Laws to be Announced on Wednesday
Facebook and Google face tough times
This Wednesday the World Economic Forum will take place in Switzerland. Facebook, Google, Apple and other Web companies are waiting to see the next version of Europe’s data protection laws that would be revealed at the forum. The document could include harsh penalties that will enable the European Commission to impose fines of up to 5 percent of a company’s global financial turnover.
A copy of the draft European Union Data Protection Directive, version 56, dated November 29th, 2011 included the “right to be forgotten” allowing the more fluid exporting of data, and increased accountability for cloud-service providers to fall under many of the same obligations as organisations that outsource their data.
Sources in the European Parliament said that although the document was “close to being finalised”, the framework of the new laws were installed in the document, and only “minor revisions would be made”. Sources also confirmed that the draft laws would be revealed at the upcoming World Economic Forum.
The document outlined penalties that could enable the European Commission to impose fines of up to 5 percent of a company’s global financial turnover. This could amount to billions of euros if major firms, such as Google or Facebook were found to break the new laws. But Reuters report that this figure was brought down in later revisions of the draft laws to two percent, or even lower to one percent.
Currently, the bar is set in Europe’s antitrust fines. A company can be fined up to 10 percent of its global annual turnover should it be in breach of Europe’s antitrust laws.
Such Web firms, like Google and Facebook, have set up opposition to the new laws which could threaten how they function in the European region. Because they operate within Europe, they are bound by European laws, as well as the laws of their often U.S.-headquartered offices.
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