Electronic communications privacy policy

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Directive 2002/58 / EC

Title: Directive 2002/58 / EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of July 12, 2002 on the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in electronic communications
Short title: Electronic communications privacy policy
Designation:
(not official)
ePrivacy Policy
Scope: EEA
Legal matter: Data protection law
Basis: Article 95 of the EC Treaty
Procedure overview: European Commission
European Parliament
IPEX Wiki
Come into effect: July 31, 2002
Last change by: Directive 2009/136 / EC
Effective date of the
last change:
December 19, 2009
To be
implemented in national law by:
October 30, 2003
Change: May 25, 2011
Implemented by: Germany
Telecommunications
Act Law against Unfair Competition
Law introducing a storage obligation and a maximum storage period for traffic data
Law amending telecommunications regulations
Austria
Telecommunications Act 2003 Federal law amending
the Telecommunications Act 2003, the KommAustria Act and the Consumer Authorities Cooperation Act
Reference: OJ L 201 of 31.7.2002, pp. 37-47
Full text Consolidated version (not official)
basic version
The regulation must have been implemented in national law.
Please note the information on the current version of legal acts of the European Union !

The data protection guideline for electronic communication (also: ePrivacy guideline ) is a guideline issued in 2002 by the European Community , which sets binding minimum standards for data protection in telecommunications . The guideline was amended in 2009 and has been referred to as the cookie guideline since then . One of the changes in the amendment, for example, requires user consent for some types of cookies on websites. This is to ensure “that data and media groups no longer record what they are looking for, reading or buying on the Internet without the consent of the users”.

The ePrivacy Directive should not be confused with the ePrivacy Regulation ( ePrivVO ), which was supposed to replace the ePrivacy Directive , but initially failed in the European legislative process at the end of 2019 because the member states could not agree on a common text.

The directive and the national implementations also apply after the General Data Protection Regulation (Art. 95 GDPR) comes into force . They are to be replaced by a regulation.

Goal and content

The directive aims to protect the basic rights and privacy of the residents of the European Union on the one hand, and to ensure the free movement of data and goods between the EU member states on the other. The directive thus supplements Directive 95/46 / EC (data protection directive) from 1995.

The directive obliges the EU member states to enact telecommunications-specific regulations on data protection, for example prohibiting eavesdropping on telephone calls and interception of e-mails. The guideline also contains specifications on individual billing, the options for displaying and suppressing telephone numbers, automatic call forwarding and free and revocable inclusion in subscriber directories.

The forerunner of the data protection guideline for electronic communication was the guideline 97/66 / EG, colloquially also called "ISDN guideline". This expired on October 31, 2003.

Implementation in national law

Like all European Union directives, Directive 2002/58 / EC had to be transposed into national law. The Republic of Austria implemented the directive on time with the Telecommunications Act 2003 ( Federal Law Gazette I No. 70/2003 ). The Federal Republic of Germany did not succeed in implementing it on time. The European Commission then initiated infringement proceedings against Germany. In mid-2004, Germany then transformed the data protection guidelines for electronic communications into German law. To this end, the Federal German Telecommunications Act was amended ( BGBl. 2004 I p. 1190 ).

literature

  • Anna Ohlenburg: The new EU data protection directive 2002/58 / EG. Effects and innovations for electronic communication. In: Multimedia and Law . 2003, p. 83 ff.
  • Martin Zilkens: European data protection law - an overview. In: Law of data processing . 2007, pp. 196-201.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Directive 2009/136 / EC "Cookie Directive"
  2. Harald Schumann : Legislation in the black box: How democratic is the EU? Sheets for German and International Politics , May 2019, accessed on June 2, 2019 .
  3. Stefan Krempl: E-Privacy: EU states let regulation fail, commission wants a new start. In: heise.de. December 3, 2019, accessed December 4, 2019 .
  4. Procedure 2017/0002 / COD: COM (2017) 8: Proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by the institutions, bodies and offices of the Union, on the free movement of data and repeal of Regulation (EC) No. 45/2001 and Decision No. 1247/2002 / EC. In: EUR-Lex . Retrieved July 4, 2018 .
  5. Directive 97/66 / EC