Following many years of intense political debate on data protection in the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will finally become law across the EU in May 2018 and is designed to be the cornerstone of data protection in Europe. It sets out directly applicable rules on the rights of data subjects, the duties of those organisations that demand the processing of personal data and those that do the processing (data controllers and processors), international data transfers and the powers of supervisory authorities.
Opinion on the data protection reform package
"The Annual Report clearly shows that 2010 has been a very busy, dynamic, but also very productive year for everyone at the EDPS and for data protection in general. This is fully in line with the need to increase our efforts to ensure a more effective protection of privacy and personal data in a changing world which is increasingly global, Internet driven and dependent on the wide spread use of ICTs in all areas of life. This trend affects every single one of us, so it is crucially important for the EU as a whole and for the activities of the EU administration." Peter Hustinx, EDPS