The 27 EU Member States approved a proposal that has remained since 2017, with parties divided between those who want strict online privacy and others who want to give freedom to law enforcement and advertisers.
Portugal, which currently holds the EU presidency, presented a compromise proposal, approved by a qualified majority at a meeting in Brussels.
“The road to the council’s position has not been easy,” said Portuguese Infrastructure Minister Pedro Nuno Santos.
“But we now have a mandate that strikes a good balance between soundly protecting people’s privacy and promoting the development of new technologies and innovations.”
France, which wants to give its police force stronger tools to fight terrorism, wants to limit the restrictions on the law on access to private data.
The fight against child pornography has also been a major concern of many Member States.
But Germany maintained much stricter privacy rules, with fewer exceptions.
In the approved text, Member States agreed that service providers are allowed to “prevent, prevent, investigate, detect or prosecute crime”.
In addition, companies such as Facebook and Google, may continue to process metadata of their users, but only with consent and if the information is made anonymous.
The final text also supported the advertising industry and abandoned the plan to ban so-called cookies, which closely monitor online activity.
The proposal updates existing EU rules dating back to 2002, according to which strict confidentiality protection only applies to text messages and voice calls provided by traditional telecommunications, sparing technological giants.
Portugal will now negotiate with European Parliament on the final version of the plan, which will then need to be ratified by MEPs and the 27 Member States.
But the parliament’s lead rapporteur, who is monitoring the talks, warned that the talks would be tough.
“We have to fear that the industry’s attempts to undermine the directive in recent years have paid off – they have had ample time to do so,” said Birgit Sipel, a German MEP from the center-left S&D.
“We now need to analyze in detail whether the Member States ‘proposals really contribute to better protecting consumers’ private communication online, or instead serve mainly the business models of some digital corporations.”
Comments are closed.