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Deutsch: Stavros Lambrinidis: Erster EU-Sonderbeauftragter für Menschenrechte

On 25 July 2012, on a proposal by Catherine Ashton, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the Council of the European Union appointed Mr Stravos Lambridinis, former MEP, as EU Special Representative for Human Rights.

This appointment is the result of repeated demands from the European Parliament and a recommendation of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

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Deutsch: EuGH verurteilt Microsoft zu 860 Millionen Euro Strafe

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has rejected Microsoft’s appeal against the European Commission’s decision of 2008 to fine the company for not having shared interoperability information to its competitors, in a long case first brought by the European Commission's competition watchdog in 1998.

A record fine of 899 million Euro was given by the European Commission in 2008, which decided that, by the end of 2007, Microsoft had not fulfilled its obligations under the "Reasonable And Non Discriminatory (RAND)" conditi

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Deutsch: EDRi-Stellungnahme zur Konsultation über Abgaben auf Privatkopien

In November 2011, the European Commissioner Michel Barnier appointed Mr Antonio Vitorino – former EU Commissioner – as mediator in the dialogue on private copying levies. A public consultation was (quite discreetly) launched by Mr Vitorino in April 2012. The consultation deadline, to which EDRi answered, was last Thursday.

In its answers, EDRi underlines the incoherence of having a levy on private copying when there is no consistency in EU regarding the scope of private copying.

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Deutsch: EP lehnt Durchsetzung von Urheberrechten im Rahmen der EU-Sicherheitst...

With a crushing majority of 503 in favour to 55 against and 56 abstentions, the European Parliament yesterday rejected the inclusion of the protection of intellectual property rights as a key element in the protection of Europe's internal security.

In a piece of what the Commission appears to have believed to be a piece of masterful political syllogism, it explained in its Internal Security Strategy (adopted at the end of 2010) that dangerous counterfeit goods are a threat

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Auf der Suche nach einer Google-Strategie

The more time passes, the more difficult it is to explain the love-hate relationship between European conservatives and Google.

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Deutsch: Der Europäische Datenschutzbeauftragte zur geplanten EU-Datenschutzre...

On 7 March 2012, Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) issued his Opinion on the proposed reform package adopted by the Commission on 25 January that includes a Regulation with general rules on data protection and a Directive with specific data protection rules for the law enforcement sector.

While welcoming the General Data Protection Regulation reform package, considering it a very big step ahead for the data protection right in Europe, the EPDS expresses his concern that the proposed regulat

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Deutsch: Reform europäischer Normen: Blankovollmacht bremst offene Formate aus

The European standardisation system is being revamped.

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Deutsch: WP 29: Google verstößt gegen den Datenschutz

A few days in advance of Google's revision of its privacy policies, European data protection authorities (DPAs) find that Google's new privacy policy would infringe European data protection rules. The lead DPA, the French CNIL, points out that the policy is too vague and raised concerns about the combination of data collected via different services. It requested Google to suspend the roll-out of the new policy until CNIL has completed its analysis.