On November 22, the Permanent Representatives Committee of the Council of the European Union (COREPER) rejected the Council’s position on the draft e-Privacy Regulation. This means that the acceptance of the long-awaited e-Privacy Regulation that should complement the GDPR is still not on the horizon. 

The Commission presented the first version of a new e-Privacy Regulation in January 2017 with the ambition that it should have become applicable together with the GDPR. Due to the fact that some points of the draft legislation were highly debated by the Member States, the process was much slower than the Commission had originally expected. The Finnish Presidency made an attempt from July 2019 to push the draft toward acceptance but this attempt seems to be failed on November 22. 

The efforts to find a compromise are clear from the Progress Report dated November 27 as it states that WP TELE examined the proposal on ten occasions and the Finnish Presidency issued a number of new compromise texts in the last few months. According to the Progress Report, the main points of discussion were the followings in the second half of 2019:

• processing of electronic communications data for the purposes of prevention of child abuse imagery,
• processing of electronic communications data for preventing other serious crimes, in particular terrorism,
• protection of terminal equipment information,
• the scope of the Regulation, in particular when it comes to processing of electronic communications data by the end-users or entrusted third parties after receipt, or upon receipt for ensuring the security of the end-user’s network and information systems,
• the issue of data retention,
• the cooperation among various authorities involved (notably data protection authorities and national regulatory authorities) and with regard to the role and involvement of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB),
• the interaction between the e-Privacy proposal with new technologies, in particular in the context of M2M and IoT services.

The Progress Report concludes that the general approach did not receive sufficient support. 

What’s next?

The new Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen has the choice to decide on the next steps: withdraw or re-draft the proposal.

This means that for the time being, e-Privacy issues remain regulated by national laws implementing the e-Privacy Directive.