{"id":155025,"date":"2025-06-03T14:40:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T14:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/155025\/"},"modified":"2025-06-03T14:40:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T14:40:12","slug":"six-months-without-a-new-eu-privacy-chief-and-still-no-deal-in-sight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/155025\/","title":{"rendered":"Six months without a new EU privacy chief, and still no deal in sight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

Six months after the mandate of the privacy watchdog of the EU institutions \u2013 the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) \u2013 expired, EU lawmakers and national governments still can’t agree on who will lead the authority.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And the decision on who will take over from the current EDPS, Poland\u2019s Wojciech Wiewi\u00f3rowski, is no closer to being taken, according to\u00a0people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n

The selection process has been plagued by delays. Hearings, which were due before 5 December, when Wiewi\u00f3rowski\u2019s mandate ended, were pushed back by the Commission to January because of delays<\/a>\u00a0with approving a shortlist of candidates.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

After that, politicians failed to agree on a successor, with both the European Parliament and the member states backing different candidates from the four contenders picked by the Commission following hearings in January.<\/p>\n

A special working group with representatives from both institutions was set up, which met a few times, but those meetings were inconclusive, and no further meeting has been convened on the issue.<\/p>\n

The Parliament\u2019s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee, LIBE, voted <\/a>to appoint long-time Commission official Bruno Gencarelli, from Italy, while the member states are backing Wiewi\u00f3rowski to stay on for another mandate.<\/p>\n

In March, think tank Centre for AI & Digital Humanism and a group of privacy academics wrote<\/a>\u00a0to the Parliament and Commission presidents, signalling Gencarelli ought to be conflicted from the role.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Appointing him would be \u201ca violation of the constitutionally protected complete independence of EDPS and of the principle of good administration. This would also undermine the European system of checks and balances, in favour of the Commission,\u201d the letter said, adding that the next privacy chief should be a \u201ccandidate whose independence is beyond doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n

The EDPS job has never been held by a former Commission official: Wiewi\u00f3rowski, as well as his predecessors Peter Hustinx (2004-2009 and 2009-2014) and Giovanni Buttarelli (2014 -2019) all previously worked at national supervisory authorities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Opinions<\/strong><\/p>\n

Established in 2004, the EDPS is unable to fine tech giants for breaches of EU privacy rules \u2014 that’s a competence of the national data protection authorities \u2014 it publishes opinions on legislative proposals and weighs in on upcoming digital legislation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the absence of a new head of the watchdog, Wiewi\u00f3rowski is continuing his work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For example, earlier this month the EDPS office published\u00a0an opinion <\/a>on rules proposed by the Commission to establish a common system for the return of third-country nationals staying illegally in the EU.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His advice was to carry out an in-depth fundamental rights impact assessment \u201cto better identify and mitigate potential risks.”<\/p>\n

Isabelle Roccia, Managing Director, Europe of privacy professional\u2019s organisation IAPP, told Euronews that the role of the EDPS has developed much more than was anticipated when it created 20 years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt 1748961611 oversees compliance for close to 80 EU entities and has built a significant role in EU policymaking over time,\u201d Roccia said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUnderstandably, MEPs and member states are carefully gauging how the next Supervisor could navigate data protection vis-\u00e0-vis other areas of law, new technology, security and geopolitics, at a time when the Commission is focused on competitiveness and simplification,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

The Commission did not reply before publication to a request for a comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ADVERTISEMENT Six months after the mandate of the privacy watchdog of the EU institutions \u2013 the European Data…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[6511,2000,7221,299,5187,1699,18325,6512],"class_list":{"0":"post-155025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-data-protection","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-eu-policy","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-gdpr","15":"tag-privacy"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114619955820497524","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}