The informal meeting of the Council of the European Union and the European Commission, Home and Justice Affairs Council held in Nicosia has adopted two Hungarian proposals related to the EU’s data protection reform, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Public Administration and Justice Tibor Navracsics announced.

At the first round of the session discussing the concept presented by the European Commission in January for the review of the regulation of data protection in the EU, Hungary proposed that the administrative burdens of small and medium-sized businesses should be eased.

“The proposal of the Commission originally contained a number of regulations that would have imposed increased administrative obligations on small and medium-sized businesses from a data protection viewpoint. We suggested that we should adopt a differentiated approach to the various economic players from the respect of data protection and, if possible, the Commission should develop a less stringent solution for small and medium-sized businesses”, Tibor Navracsics said.

Budapest also proposed that the EU should introduce a risk-based regulation; in other words, upon the establishment of data protection obligations, the rules should not focus on the size of the business but on the sensitivity of the information managed, Tibor Navracsics said, stressing that the vast majority of the Member States were in favour of this proposal. By the Minister’s account, Hungary agreed that the prospective regulations should be sensitive to features specific to the individual nations.

Following the amendments, the debate on the data protection reform will be followed by further rounds in the autumn, and as expected, after the EU Presidency of Cyprus, Ireland, too, will continue to discuss the issue during its EU Presidency.

First-round talks were also held with respect to the freezing and confiscation of proceeds of crime within the EU, during the course of which the parties laid down theoretical positions. Hungary “is in favour of the proposal that permits the introduction of rules regarding non-conviction-based confiscation”, however, we insist that these should be introduced within the framework of regulations that “feature elements of guarantee similar to criminal proceedings”, Tibor Navracsics stated, and added that there are, at this point in time, major differences on this issue between the Member States.

(kormany.hu)