EU: Dispute continues over private data

The EU is keeping up its threat of an interruption in exchanges of data with the United States, following MS concerns over the latest US concessions in the protection of privacy disagreement. The EU Directive on data protection, which entered into force at the end of October 1998, enables MS authorities to interrupt data transfers to countries where levels of protection are deemed to be insufficient. A committee created to monitor implementation of the Directive met last week in Brussels, but was unable to issue unconditional approval on transfers of private data to the USA.

Meanwhile, the Commission is carefully studying the detail of national implementations of the Directive in the EU. At the time of its entry into force, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Italy were the only countries of the 15 Member States totally prepared to implement it, and transposition laws were being studied in most of the other states, with the exception of Germany, France and Luxembourg.