On 8 April 2016 (see here), the Council of the European Union announced that it has formally adopted its position at the first reading on the EU General Data Protection Regulation, a key step in the data protection reform process.
The Council’s position will now be sent to the European Parliament who will vote on whether they approve the Council’s position at first reading. This is expected to take place on Thursday 14 April. If the text is adopted in the European Parliament, it will be scheduled for formal adoption in Council shortly thereafter (which should be a mere formality). Following this, the adopted text will need to be translated into the official languages of the European Union which could take between 1 and 3 months. At this point it will be published in the Official Journal. The legislation will enter into force 20 days after publication and will then apply 2 years later. As a regulation, the legislation does not require Member State transposition and will apply directly.
In preparation for the second reading of the European Parliament, the EU Council of Ministers has published a new version of the General Data Protection Regulation, dated 6 April 2016. We understand that the changes that have been made (which can be seen here) are intended to clarify some of the unclear wording in the text that was adopted by political agreement on 15 December last year.
