Viviane Reding referenced about the Justice Council’s progress on the data protection reform. According to her press release, the Justice Council agreed on two pillars of the reform:
1) rules governing data transfer to third countries (which will be possible either when the Commission finds that a third country is “adequate” in terms of data protection OR when appropriate safeguards exist OR in specific situations which necessitate the transfer, e.g tax investigation);
2) territorial scope of the data protection regulation. “In simple words: EU data protection law will apply to non-European companies if they do business on our territory – the European Single Market.”
She reported that the Council also discussed – and positions are coming closer – “the one-stop shop principle according to which there should be one decision by one single data protection regulator when it comes to cross-border services involving data processing.”
Read the Text with the European Parliament’s amendments of 12 March 2014 to the EU Commission Proposal