The EU also issues its response to the latest Brexit developments. The Developers Alliance Nov-Dec 2019 EU Policy Update.
Europe Gets Ambitious About Going Green.
GDPR Right To Be Forgotten Guidance Issued.
Pseudonymisation Techniques and Best Practices.
European Cybersecurity Taxonomy.
New Online Resources For Accessibility Now Available.
The European Union
The end of 2019 finds the European Union at the beginning of a five-year political cycle, with new political leadership from the European Parliament, a new President of the European Council and a new European Commission.
Europe Gets Ambitious About Going Green.
The new Commission has started its work, proposing a European Green Deal, an ambitious strategy with the objective to make Europe the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050.
We’re happy to see that the document is mentioning AI’s potential to solve the difficult problems posed by climate change and the transition to a green economy.
Data Balanced, Human Centric.
The Commission’s regulatory plans relevant to the technology industry have already been revealed. The main proposals to be presented in the course of the next year will be those on Artificial Intelligence (“Trustworthy AI”), the Digital Services Act (regarding especially online platforms liability) and a European Data Strategy. All these measures are aimed at “enhancing Europe’s technological sovereignty”.
Speaking of the data economy, the political debate was started by Finland, which, in its capacity as Presidency of the Council of the European Union, has released ‘Principles for a human-centric, thriving and balanced data economy’.
Terroristic Content
The proposal for preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online is still in negotiation, as the co-legislators couldn’t reach a compromise agreement within the three trilogues scheduled under Finlands’ Presidency of the Council of the EU. It’s now for Croatia, the next in line for the rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU, to continue the negotiation rounds with the European Parliament and the European Commission. The Developers Alliance recently signed a joint industry letter in support of some amendments of the European Parliament which respond to the industry’s major concerns.
The European Commission criticized France’s draft law aimed at combating hate content on the internet as not fully compatible with EU law and asked Paris to postpone its adoption.
Brexit
Here’s the EU’s response to Brexit. For those not following the news, as of January 31st, 2020 UK will no longer be a Member State of the European Union. Following the result of the UK’s general elections, which politically validated the decision to leave the EU, the negotiation of a free trade agreement is expected for the next year. Amongst other concerns, the data flows between the EU and UK are at stake.
Data Protection & Privacy
Thierry Breton, the new Commissioner for the Internal Market has announced the intention to propose a new ePrivacy Regulation, after he determined, at the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council on December 3rd, that it’s impossible for the Member States to come to a common position after three years of debates.
In October, the Developers Alliance signed a joint industry letter, asking the Member States and the European Commission to rethink the proposal.
Meet The New Data Protection Supervisor.
Wojtek Wiewiorowski was appointed as the new European Data Protection Supervisor, for a five-year mandate. He previously served as Assistant Supervisor under the late EDPS Giovanni Buttarelli, during the 2014-2019 mandate. EDPS is the EU’s increasingly influential independent data protection authority.
GDPR Right To Be Forgotten Guidance Issued.
The European Data Protection Board has released new guidance on search engines’ application of the GDPR’s right to be forgotten. Deadline for comments: February 5th, 2020 at the latest.
Pseudonymisation Techniques and Best Practices.
The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) published a new report on “Pseudonymisation Techniques and Best Practices”, which explores the basic notions of pseudonymisation, as well as technical solutions that can support implementation in practice.
This de-identification process became more relevant in the context of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), being considered as both a security and data protection by design mechanism.
Miscellaneous
IOT Best Practices Issued.
“Good Practices for Security of IoT – Secure Software Development Lifecycle” is another ENISA paper for interest for those developers working in the IoT sector. It provides good practices for IoT security, with a particular focus on software development guidelines for secure IoT products and services throughout their lifetime.
European Cybersecurity Taxonomy.
Also for the attention of cybersecurity geeks, there’s a proposal for a European Cybersecurity Taxonomy “aligning the cybersecurity terminologies, definitions, and domains into a coherent and comprehensive taxonomy to facilitate the categorisation of EU cybersecurity competencies.”
New Online Resources For Accessibility Now Available.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in collaboration with UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (UNESCO IITE) launched a free online course on digital accessibility. “The course explains how to design accessible websites and apps, meeting standards and providing an optimal user experience for everyone.” The MOOC is still open for enrolment here and can be followed from 28 January 2020 on the edX platform.
Insightful Wrap-Ups.
As a wrap-up of this year, tech.eu’s Building, Growing, Connecting: An analysis of the state of European tech in 2019 and Atomico’s State of European Tech, provide insightful information on the performance of the tech sector in Europe.
