EU agrees data protection regulation – despite cloud computing warnings from Amazon, Cisco, IBM and SAP

Grazed from Computing. Author: Graeme Burton.

The Council of the European Union has agreed to new EU Data Protection Regulations that will co-ordinate the law across the 28-member-state bloc for the first time. The agreement after three years of sometimes fractious negotiations was reached at a meeting of justice and home affairs ministers in Luxembourg today.

EU officials claim that making pan-EU data protection laws in the form of a regulation, rather than a looser directive, will provide a foundation for the so-called "digital single market" and instigate growth in the EU’s somewhat moribund technology and internet industries – an area in which Europe lags behind both America and Asia…

However, far from encouraging growth, technology giants have warned that the new regulations risk strangling Europe’s nascent cloud computing industry and driving internet companies into other jurisdictions where the draconian regulations do not apply. SAP, Amazon, IBM and Cisco have all warned that the Data Protection Regulations could have a deleterious effect…

Read more from the source @ http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2413212/eu-agrees-data-protection-regulation-despite-cloud-computing-warnings-from-amazon-cisco-ibm-and-sap