Brussels, 17 October 2017 – Today, the pro-privacy groups of the European Parliament have finally stopped negotiations with the regressive party (EPP1The European People’s Party), which was trying to broadly allow the industry to monitor us online. It was time! They have no more excuse and must now draft an acceptable Regulation to protect our privacy. This is their last opportunity to redeem themselves.
The EPP has been blocking negotiations on ePrivacy Regulation for months, pushing absurd positions against our fundamental freedoms. Pro-privacy parties (S&D, ALDE, Greens and GUE2S&D is the Socialist & Democrats group, ALDE is the Alliance for Liberals and Democrats, Greens gathers the European Greens groups and GUE is the European United Left) have finally woken up and made the EPP leave the table. They now seem ready to draft a decent text… few days before its adoption.
Their long, nightmarish torpor has prevented them from addressing fundamental issues they must now deal with:
- stores or cities must not be allowed to geolocate us without our consent;
- Governments must not spy on us without a court order;
- websites must not track us without our consent for any “audience measuring”;
- communications must not be analysed without the consent of both sender and receiver(s);
- our rights to encryption and to access the Internet anonymously must be ensured.
Pro-privacy parties, led by the rapporteur Marju Lauristin, have already lost too much time. If they failed to seize today’s opportunity to adopt all of the measures listed above, they would bear the responsibility for the future state of our lost privacy.
Ms Lauristin will leave the European Parliament few days after the vote (she’s been elected in local Estonian elections). This is her last opportunity to act in favor of Europeans and our freedoms, and to be remembered as such.