Věra Jourová, the European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, says that she is determined to continue the effort towards data protection reform and to make the reform a reality. Speaking at a European Data Protection and Privacy Conference in Brussels, she said that she recently experienced how it feels when personal data is mis-used on the internet – ‘when I discovered that somebody created a fake Twitter account in my name’.
She set out how the European Union’s (EU) proposed Data Protection Regulation will do away with 28 differing national laws, and provide a single set of rules on data protection, valid across the EU. She said that the aim is to adopt that reform in 2015.
As for the Edward Snowden revelations about United States spying, or as she put it, ‘access US national security authorities have to EU citizens’ personal data’, she hoped that ‘we will soon get a robust response from the US on this’.
She spoke of data protection in terms of a European ‘single digital market’, summing up: “And we shouldn’t wait for the world to impose lower data protection standards on us. We should strive for a gold standard in data protection because we owe it to our citizens, and we owe it to our businesses.”
For the full speech visit http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-14-2504_en.htm?locale=en.
