- EU data law changes include Business Wallet IDs.
- Say adieu to cookie banners.
- Personal data treatment and AI training stipulations tightened.
The EU has announced that it is amending significantly the structure of the legislation that governs digital life for EU citizens and businesses operating in the bloc.
Its omnibus legislation aims to simplify the number of laws under which the region operates, amalgamating several rafts of legislation into two Acts, the Data Act and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
Cookie banners
The headline news for consumers’ online experiences is that the dreaded cookie banners commonly seen on European websites will become a significantly less common sight. Instead of approving or denying consent for a website to drop cookies into their browser, users will eventually be able to set global and per-site preferences – most likely in their browser settings. Sites will then be able to follow the user’s preferences without interfering with the user experience.
The EU estimates that this will save businesses more than E800 million designing, maintaining and serving cookie banners. There will also be a whitelist of purposes for which cookies can be set by sites without user consent, such as counting site visitors.
What to do now
- Review current cookie-banner tools, identify which features will become redundant, and plan to integrate with browser-managed consent signals instead.
- Determine which cookies fall under consent-free whitelist purposes, and which will still require user preference signals.
Personal data and AI
The contentious issue of organisations using personal data to train AI models is also addressed, and aims to ensure “users’ interests are thoroughly considered and protected.”
The omnibus legislation also clarifies pseudonymisation of personal data, setting out the treatments to data that will need to be performed by organisations before it can be shared or sold. It will also define the conditions under which companies can share user data.
Rules on processing personal data by companies on users’ devices are to be moved from the ePrivacy Directive to the GDPR, so infringements will be punishable by fines of up to 4% of annual company turnover.
The EU intends that its privacy and anonymity measures will mean that companies wishing to train AIs will be able to safely share data to build models across the continent, without worrying that by using any particular data set, they will be acting unlawfully.
What to do now
- Review anonymisation processes to ensure they will align with EU directives, update any relevant internal documentation, and ensure supply chain compliance.
- Be aware that on-device data access will be subject to fines under the GDPR, so reassess consent mechanisms, privacy notices, and consider any necessary technical design changes.
EU Business Wallets
The introduction in the next two years of Business Wallets will allow organisations to have a single set of credentials that can be used online throughout the EU.
A Business Wallet will let businesses “prove their identity, sign and send official documents, or share licences and certificates digitally, with full legal value.” Business Wallets will allow organisations to interact with one another and public sector bodies with a higher degree of certainty, and lower the instances of fraud.
Business Wallets will not be mandatory, but public institutions will have to accept them when dealing with the private sector.
What to do now
- Examine which processes will benefit from a single digital identity (e.g. regulatory filings, transactions with partners, public organisation interactions).
- Keep abreast of Business Wallet definitions and methods of implementation as they appear over the next two years.
(Image source: “EU Parliament” by Louis Kreusel is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.)
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