News and Research articles on European Commission

Privacy gets another push from recent surveillance revelations, but who shall provide it? A workshop on data protection in cloud computing prior to the upcoming meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force tries to get an answer from politicians and techies.

Member states and EU bodies had to answer tough questions at the hearing of the European Court of Justice on July 9, 2013. The final ruling about the constitutionality of the EU Data Retention Directive is expected at the end of 2013.

After years of legal fights before national courts the Luxembourg court will hold a hearing on cases brought forward by Austria and Ireland.

How can European states protect themselves against surveillance programmes such as those of the US and the UK? Different takes on the question where delivered at EuroDIG, in Lisbon.

Details about a future European net neutrality rule are still lacking, but competing models from EU member states are already on the table. Should it be a law, like in the Netherlands and Slovenia, or are co-regulatory guidelines like in Norway doing the job. The Internet Policy Review's Monika Ermert was at EuroDIG this week and found some leads.

We knew the US (and other governments) were watching us, many politicians and engineers said after The Guardian and the Washington Post published information about the spy programme PRISM, which allows US agencies access to all of your whereabouts on the net.

The majority of the European Parliament welcomed the start of the negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – a EU-US free trade agreement - in a resolution released in Strasbourg on May 15. The Green Party wanted more conditions to avoid a potential degradation of European standards in data protection. European civil rights organisations warn against a mega-ACTA-like free trade agreement.

Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Portugal, France and recently The Netherlands and the UK have all allocated new spectrum in the 800 MegaHertz (MHz) band to providers of mobile broadband service, especially LTE (Long Term Evolution). Despite this new development, EU Commission Vice-President and Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes is not satisfied. Is her dissatisfaction justified?