(Bloomberg) — European Union privacy enforcement still isn’t working according to plan and changes may be needed, according to one of the architects of the bloc’s sweeping General Data Protection Regulation.
“I am not satisfied,” Vera Jourova, the European Commission’s vice president for values and transparency, warned at a conference on Thursday. “We see gaps” and “we see that some data protection authorities in some member states are understaffed, not equipped with sufficient budget, not supported with sufficient political support from the governments.”
Tensions have been building among data watchdogs over the amount of time Ireland’s authority is taking to complete probes of big U.S. tech companies with EU bases in the nation — including Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook and Apple Inc. Jourova told Bloomberg in March that the agencies need to sort out “public squabbles.”
“My message is clear: if this decentralized system for enforcement” under the GDPR, “which was meant to be a strong tool, especially in the hands of the individual people, if this does not work, then we will have to propose changes,” said Jourova.
GDPR, which took effect in 2018, empowers EU data regulators to levy penalties of as much as 4% of a company’s annual revenue for the most serious violations. The Irish authority, the EU home for many of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech firms, has fined Twitter Inc. 450,000 euros ($510,000) and in September ordered Facebook Inc.’s WhatsApp to pay a 225 million euros for failing to be transparent about how it handled personal information.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
