The European Parliament has voted to substantially strengthen the rules relating to cross-border GDPR enforcement procedures, whose inefficiency have plagued the landmark data protection law. Consumer groups have repeatedly flagged the slowness and complex procedures for cross-border enforcement of the GDPR as a major barrier to effective protection of consumers’ personal data.

BEUC welcomes the Parliament’s position, which would significantly improve the functioning of the GDPR. The Parliament for example asks that a decision by an authority must be reached within nine months of the original complaint. Today procedures can take over five years, as is currently the case with BEUC’s members’ complaints against Google’s geo-location practices, which were filed in 2018 and for which there is still no decision.

BEUC now calls on EU Member States to support the Parliament position and address the remaining issues in this reform, which include giving complainants such as consumer organisations a right to be heard ahead of the decision on their complaint.

Ursula Pachl, Deputy Director General of the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC), said:
“It is absolutely vital for people’s data protection rights that enforcement of the GDPR is speeded up and made more effective. Too often, consumers have to wait forever for a decision from the relevant authorities, while consumer groups have often not been able to access information related to investigations or be heard in cross-border cases.

“The Parliament position adopted today would substantially speed up the handling of GDPR complaints and is a big step in the right direction.

“But more still needs to be done to get to a satisfactory outcome for consumers who lodge complaints against a company. For example, data protection authorities involved in cross-border cases must be granted more time to review the work of the lead supervisory authority and the complainants must be heard when different authorities disagree on the decision.”