The Finnish presidency aims to reach an agreement by the end of 2019 after previous presidencies have failed to do so.
Background: The proposed ePrivacy Regulation has been one of the most controversial pieces of recent European legislation. The Regulation should replace the ePrivacy Directive of 2002, which guarantees the secrecy of communications for citizens and limits the scope of what electronic communications service providers can do with communications data. The previous Commission tabled the proposal in January 2017; despite their resolve to pass it before the last European elections, strong disagreements between member states (and between Council and Parliament) led to a standstill.
Finland tries to break the deadlock: This week, the Finnish presidency of the European Council is trying where previous presidencies have failed, such as Austria and Romania. On 30 October 2019, it tabled a new text to be discussed at the next meeting of the Council’s Telecommunications Working Group (TELE WP) scheduled for 7 November 2019. The draft proposes two possible options on the whole scope of the regulation, and amendments to the body of the proposal on aspects such as processing of data for specific functionalities, choice related to cookies, and protection of terminal equipment.
The road ahead is still long: Despite the efforts, it is far from guaranteed that the Finnish presidency will succeed. There is still deep division between member states on a range of issues (including, among others, the Regulation’s alignment with the GDPR). Even if the text cleared the Council’s hurdle, the trialogue negotiations that would follow with the EC and the Parliament will have to iron out significant differences. Industry is also continuing to voice concerns: the GSMA and Cable Europe issued a joint statement on 10 October 2019, noting the Regulation still has gaps in levelling the playing field between telecoms and digital services, and should move to a more future-proof, risk-based approach to facilitate innovation.
