The LIBE committee voted to adopt the final agreement on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with a majority of 50 for, compared with three against and one abstention. This leaves the way clear for the European Parliament to rubber stamp the law on 14 April 2016.
Hogan Lovells, international privacy lawyer, said the effects of the law will be felt across all industry sectors and well beyond Europe. This is the culmination of a legal reform directly aimed at steering the next stage of the digital economy.
The GDPR will not pass alone. Part of the data protection package is an EU directive on data protection for law enforcement agencies. The directive is aimed at improving cooperation and exchange of information between police and judicial authorities, while establishing common standards for data protection across the EU.
Once the regulation has been officially published, EU countries will have two years to implement the new law.
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