On January 10, 2017, the European Commission proposed a new ePrivacy Regulation (Proposal). Compared to the internal draft that was leaked in December, the official Proposal has been substantially modified. However, the general approach taken by the European Commission has not changed. The Proposal includes provisions with a broad scope of application covering over-the-top (OTT) services as well as communication between devices and all data stored on a device.

In the internal draft, the European Commission suggested to allow Member States to set the level of fines for unsolicited marketing communication. In the Proposal, the fine is set to be up to 10 million Euros. The European Commission also included May 25, 2018 as the date on which the new Regulation should become applicable. This would ensure that the ePrivacy Regulation would be in place simultaneously with the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679). However, given the complexity of the Proposal the timeline for the legislative process appears ambitious.

Look for a detailed analysis of the Proposal posted shortly on the Global Privacy & Security Compliance Law Blog.