Currently, the draft legislation contains several notable proposals including the ‘right to be forgotten’, the ability for citizens to request that companies remove any data gathered on them from their systems, and a single data protection body.
The European Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of the proposed draft directive with 621 votes in favour, 10 against and 22 abstentions.
Justice minister Viviane Reding, who has spearheaded calls for new data privacy legislation, said the vote proved MEPs had listened to citizens' demands for better data laws.
“Europe's Parliamentarians have listened to European citizens and businesses and, with this vote, have made clear that we need a uniform and strong European data protection law, which will make life easier for business and strengthen the protection of our citizens," she said.
Reding said the importance of good data laws that prioritised the privacy of individuals were needed now more than ever in light of the spying revelations that have emerged from the US.
"Strong data protection rules must be Europe's trademark. Following the US data spying scandals, data protection is more than ever a competitive advantage.”
But while Reding was upbeat about the vote there is still much negotiation ahead, and the final text of the law is far from certain. Some said it was not guaranteed that the new laws would survive after the next round of MEP votes.
Stewart Room, partner at law firm Field Fisher Waterhouse, told V3 the vote was "way too late in the day" to push the laws through in their current guise as the make-up of the Parliament is likely to change, with elections in May.
"The reform process is in a real mess and the European Parliament must take its share of the blame for dragging its heels. This vote could have happened a year ago. If it had, it would have applied immense pressure on the Council of Ministers," he said.
"Instead, EU member states who dislike the regulation – and there are more than the UK – will feel absolutely no pressure whatsoever, because they know that many of the MEPs who have just voted are going to be booted out in May by an increasingly Eurosceptic electorate."
As such, while Reding may have claimed the new laws were now "irreversible" Room claimed that such guarantees were not possible. "At the moment the regulation is a dead duck, or perhaps a zombie duck," he said.
Bridget Treacy, head of the UK Privacy and Cybersecurity practice at law firm Hunton & Williams, added that while the draft legislation has been voted through, that is no guarantee it will survive in its current form when debated by the Parliament and the European Council.
“Those negotiations will be crucial; it is abundantly clear that the Council does not agree with the Parliament on a number of important topics including the ‘one-stop shop’ mechanism and the level of fines for businesses,” she said.
“The Council is pushing for an approach that is risk based, rather than focusing on prescriptive details. All of this raises the question of what will be agreed and how quickly – all parties will need to make concessions for this initiative to proceed.”
Meanwhile Digital Europe, a lobbying group for numerous technology firms, said the proposed law remains “over-prescriptive” and will hamper businesses' ability to innovate.
John Higgins, director general of Digital Europe, said: “Lawmakers need to strike the right balance between protecting citizens’ privacy, while at the same time allowing further innovations in the way data is used.
“The text adopted in Parliament today fails to strike that balance. We urge national governments to continue their efforts to find the right balance. This law is too important to rush through,” he added.
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