Data protection

EU Regulation On Data Protection Unlikely To Become UK Law Before 2019 Nearly four years into the process, the Council of the European Union has now decided on its negotiating position for the trilogue with the European Parliament and the European Commission. There is now a timetable running to December 2015, during which representatives from the Council, the Parliament and the Commission will come together to decide on the final wording of the new EU-wide data protection regulation. This means that if they stick to this timetable, which on past form is by no means certain, by the end of 2015

Electric Marketing mailing lists are targeted, compiled mailing lists of 60,000 corporate influencers and budget holders. If you're included in our mailing lists and you don't want to be, we'll remove you within hours. We won't be pleased about it. We've selected you as a business person with senior responsibilities that other companies want to reach. And we only allow verified companies offering products and services pertinent to your role to access our data. But we will swiftly remove you from the mailing list. We often get messages requesting removal from people who are not on our mailing

We are following the progress of the proposed EU Regulation on Data Protection very closely. While the MEPs voted overwhelmingly for a set of proposals which would outlaw list broking, cold telemarketing and cold mailing to named contacts, the Ministers of Justice & Home Affairs from each of the 27 EU nations are taking a more business-friendly, risk-based approach. They met on 10 October to agree their own set of proposals. They will meet again in January 2015 to try to reach agreement on the issue of the 'right to be forgotten'. When the Ministers of Justice & Home Affairs have reached

We’ve been lobbying against the proposed new EU data protection legislation for getting on for two years now. Earlier in 2014 the EU Parliament agreed a piece of draconian legislation that would outlaw list broking, insist on written consent for all marketing communications sent to a named person, with no distinction between b2b and b2c, and effectively finish off personalised marketing to anyone other than your recent customers. If that legislation were enacted it would mean the end of direct marketing as we know it. We will return to the days of writing to Dear Marketing Manager or Dear

The European Parliament has voted to adopt the less business-friendly version of the Data Protection Regulation, proposed by the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) in the November 2013 report.

The European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers have now all drafted different versions of the proposed data protection regulation. Europe's Justice and Home Affairs ministers failed to reach an agreement on the draft legislation at their Council meeting in December 2013. The Greek government has taken the chair of the Presidency of the EU Council and hopes to thrash out an agreement on the wording of the new legislation by summer 2014. If this happens it is possible that the new regulations could be agreed in 2014 and become law in 2017. What impact will these

We wrote to a variety of MEPs, MPs, government ministers, other politicians and business organisations. Here are summaries of their responses: Charles Tannock MEP, Conservative - no response yet Claude Moraes MEP, Labour - no response yet Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP, Liberal Democrat - I am seeking to create an instrument with standards that are workable, realistic and enforceable by being user-friendly for citizens, allowing reasonable business to proceed, focused on outcomes rather than on process and tick-box exercise, and tough in sanctions on companies which practise deception or otherwise

You may have heard that the European Union is planning sweeping changes to data protection laws. What you may not have realised is the impact these changes will have on your business. As the proposals currently stand it will become illegal to send a mailshot send a promotional email make a telemarketing call to any named individual either at home or at work without first obtaining their explicit consent. Quite simply it will mean the end of targeted direct marketing in the UK. These proposals are probably well intentioned. It is likely that tougher data protection laws would protect vulnerable