Now in Europe, the ePrivacy Directive directive, which was adopted in 2002, meets the requirements for regulating the mechanisms for handling personal data of users. It is because of it that site owners began to ask visitors for consent to the use of cookies. However, the European Parliament decided to make adjustments to the current state of affairs and to make the requirements of the ePrivacy Directive uniform and immutable for the EU countries.

The new bill is designed to supplement and strengthen the requirements formed by the GDPR. At the same time, the main goal of the ePrivacy Regulation is to protect users of IT services from spam and intrusive advertising and strengthen their control over personal data. The ePrivacy Regulation was planned to launch simultaneously with the GDPR on May 25, 2018. However, due to disagreements within the parliament and the negative reaction of the IT community, the vote was postponed until 2019.

What is it all about?

The regulation once again raises the issue of the regulation of cookies and forms the requirements for obtaining consent for processing. According to the text of the document, cookies can be processed without the knowledge of the user, but only if this process is conditioned by the technical need to provide this or that service. The user will have to give consent for specific purposes, and his absence should not affect the quality or the possibility of providing the service. That is, the owner of the resource is obliged to provide an alternative use of the service without cookies. At the same time, all information collected via cookies is allowed to be stored only as long as it is needed for the operation of the service.

According to the new law, the transfer of data from one smart device to another will require user consent. This means that smart home solution providers, who provide their ongoing support at the ecosystem level of thematic devices and applications, will have to obtain consent for the transfer and processing of personal data.

IT companies`reaction

In general, the new bill was met rather negatively. This is due to the concerns of those companies which activities will be primarily affected by the law. So far, such an impact is assessed solely at the level of forecasts and studies.

The study says that ePrivacy will not only affect the IT sector, but will reduce the revenues of all European businesses by 30%. According to preliminary estimates, enterprises will lose 500 billion euro. In response to such arguments, MEPs remind that a new law is being created to protect the rights of citizens, and not the development of Internet businesses.

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