‘International companies must comply with European privacy rules’

International companies operating in the European Union will have to take into account stricter European data protection and privacy rules in the future. The ministers of the various member states agreed on this on Friday.

The agreement means that the various national rules will be aligned at European level. This means that international companies that are active in Europe find it less easy to establish themselves in a Member State that initially does not care so much about data protection and privacy.

The European ministers also agreed that all international companies in Europe must adhere to the future agreements. According to European Commissioner Viviane Reding of Justice, this decision confirms the vision of the European Commission and the Court of Justice of the European Union, which have been critical of the collection of data by tech companies such as Facebook and Google for some time. For example, the Court recently ruled that Google must remove search results from citizens on request.

Although an agreement was reached on Friday, ministers have not yet agreed on what the data protection rules will look like in concrete terms. Although the European Parliament voted in March in favor of unambiguous legislation that allows internet companies to collect user data only with explicit permission, no agreement has yet been reached with national governments.

However, European Commissioner Reding says that the agreements are an important step for the European Union as far as she is concerned. For example, Reding finds them an important signal after the revelations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. “Now is the day that European ministers will respond positively to his wake-up call,” she told Reuters on Friday.