The Weltimmo decision issued by the European Court of Justice on October 1, 2015 is probably one of the most important decisions on processing of data. It is so for three reasons. First, it defines the “establishment” in the most peculiar way, which has consequences in point of application of national data protection of the member states and the jurisdiction of the national data protection authorities. Second, it radically changes the perspective in which we should frame the processing of data through the web and entails the risk to an over-parcelization of the application of the national laws (and related sanctions). Third, in my opinion this decision seems to be grounded in the future instead of in the present: indeed, the Court seems to be nearer to the principles of the forthcoming Data Protection Regulation than to those of Directive 95/46/CE (currently in force). However, absent a real harmonization of the national data protection laws, the Weltimmo decision could force the online activities towards the necessary compliance with a myriad of requirements, which could slow down the development of online services.
Read more (in Italian) here.