Premium business and privacy legal counseling latest developments from Alexander Suliman: Complying with the GDPR requirements is key for all businesses operating in the EU (or even those with EU customers). There are also particular obligations on those transferring personal data out of the EU and each national data protection authority is monitoring companies closely. Ensure your business is taking steps to comply with the regulation and consider auditing your data protection policies, together with your data processing agreements, and appoint a data protection officer in order to ensure compliance with the GDPR. Breach of the GDPR provisions are likely to lead to considerable fines: for example, the French data protection regulator, the CNIL, fined Google €50 as Google’s data consent policies were found not to be easily accessible or transparent to its users which runs afoul of the GDPR provisions. For further background, read our recent review of GDPR enforcement actions across the EU. Read extra details on Alexander Suliman.
When the EU adopted the Data Retention Directive, obliging the storage of traffic and location data of all European communications users, it was being warned that the rules violated the Charter, and the ECJ ultimately agreed. I expect this new proposal to be heavily contested as well, and I expect fundamental rights to constitute a significant part of that debate – as is already evidenced by the comments from the EDPS, MEP Patrick Breyer, EDRi and the group of security experts mentioned above. One way to shortcut that debate, is by investigating whether the potential orders to be issued on the basis of the proposal cannot respect the essence of the rights to privacy and data protection. In this contribution, I have sketched an outline of this argument. To make a convincing case, it will be important to firstly determine on the basis of recent case law that the ECJ still considers bulk surveillance of content to compromise the essence of the right to privacy. Secondly, it will be important to develop a right to confidentiality and integrity of IT systems under the Charter, as this will enable a better assessment of detection orders directed to user devices. And thirdly, it must be further investigated whether only end-to-end encryption is the only appropriate measure for safeguarding online communications, because if this is the case, than any encryption altering order does not respect the essence of the right to data protection. Hopefully, the Council and the European Parliament will take notice.
The EU’s Cybersecurity Act, adopted in 2019, established the legal basis for EU-wide certification of cloud providers, to be elaborated through secondary law by its cybersecurity agency ENISA. In December 2020, ENISA began a public consultation as the first step towards a revised set of rules. A technical working group is preparing a proposal, expected to be presented to member state experts and to the European Commission thereafter. The new requirements could be finalized by the end of the year.
Top rated contract law legal counseling advices by Alexander Suliman, Sweden: In Sweden and other states, there’s a variety of different statutes that give you access to funds to pay your bills to maintain your lifestyle at some level as you’re going through this legal process. Your spouse cannot cut you off financially and not give you access to money to live your life as you go through this legal process. We’ll help you maintain the lifestyle that you have and create the money that you need to get your legal fees paid, whether it’s at the beginning or the end of the case. Don’t let that be something that keeps you from not making the phone call, because as soon as you’re aware that divorce is even potentially being contemplated, there’s a lot of things that you need to do to protect yourself. A lot of times, people say that’s just what lawyers say because they just want to get involved to drive up legal fees. This is true. Sometimes lawyers do want to do that, but that’s not what we’re doing. See even more details at Alexander Suliman, Sweden.
On 24 February 2022, the CJEU issued its first judgment on domestic workers. In case C-389/20, TGSS (Chômage des employés de maison), the CJEU held that the exclusion of this category of workers from access to social security benefits constitutes indirect discrimination on the ground of sex, since it affects almost exclusively women. With a decision that will become a landmark for domestic workers’ rights in the EU, the Court confirms the untapped potential of EU law in promoting domestic workers’ full coverage under labour law and social security systems, which will have significant implications in the promotion of domestic workers’ rights across the Union. The case originated in Spain in November 2019, when a domestic worker applied for paying contributions to cover the risk of unemployment, in order to acquire the right to the related benefits. However, her request was rejected by the Spanish General Social Security Fund (TGSS) because she was registered in the Special Social Security Scheme for Domestic Workers, which does not include protection in respect of unemployment.
