ePrivacy: EU legislators chase compromise on processing electronic communications data

After months of stagnating debates on the ePrivacy Regulation, EU lawmakers and diplomats have moved on to discussing the sensitive issue of processing electronic communications data, metadata, and content.

On 10 November, representatives from the European Parliament and EU Council met for a technical discussion on the ePrivacy Regulation, a much-debated legislative initiative that has been stuck for years.

EU countries only reached a common position in February 2021, four years after the proposal was presented. Since then, the negotiating teams of the two institutions have hardly seen any breakthrough as the technical discussions focused on less controversial parts of the proposals.

A joint non-paper from the Parliament’s rapporteur Birgit Sippel and the Czech EU Council Presidency, discussed last week and seen by EURACTIV, marked a departure in this sense, addressing the critical part of the protection of electronic communications. (...)