Wednesday 20 February 2013

Decision time at the European Parliament

Glancing at a recent news report, I see that, coincidentally, some European Parliamentary Committees are voting on a wide range of amendments to the proposed General Data Protection Regulation at almost the same time that various European regulators are threatening (again) to take action against Google for apparently behaving in an awful manner.

Presumably, these events are not linked.

Presumably, there is no attempt on the part of certain regulators to keep stories about awful overseas-based data controllers in the minds of the public (and their MEPs) at the very time that some MEPs are supposed to be wading through documents stuffed with impenetrable data protection amendments. 

If the rules were changed to allow European parliamentarians only to take part in votes on amendments and issues that they understood, I expect that the number of politicians eligible to take part in votes on the Regulation would drop quite substantially.

As it is, I’m sure that lots of amendments will be waved through by people who may not fully appreciate the financial implications of what they are doing.

But never mind.

Perhaps when the Member States have had their say on what the instrument should look like, the text will have radically changed again.

Source:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2013/0220/1224330264816.html

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