EUROPEAN PRESS PUBLISHERS REMAIN CAUTIOUS WITH REGARD TO THE APPLICATION OF THE FUTURE REGULATION
Date
17 Dec 2015
Sections
InfoSociety
Innovation & Enterprise
Languages & Culture
Brussels, 17 December 2015 – Following today’s vote in the European Parliament committee for Civil Liberties (LIBE), press publishers in Europe, represented by ENPA and EMMA, would like to underline their main priorities in the context of the agreement achieved during interinstitutional negotiations on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
First of all, press publishers across Europe would like to reiterate to EU and national decision makers the urgent need to ensure that press freedom is fully protected as a core European democratic value. In this respect, Article 80 of the Regulation provides the minimum level of protection for press freedom and for journalistic data processing that Member States would have to respect or even strengthen at national level.
Protecting editorial press freedom indeed requires that data processing for journalistic purposes are exempted from the application of certain provisions of the Regulation. The final text preserves the essence of what is currently foreseen under the 95/46 EC Directive. Nevertheless, EMMA and ENPA, together with their respective members, will remain particularly vigilant that appropriate exemptions are adopted at national level accordingly.
Furthermore, considering that press subscriptions and controlled circulation strongly depend on data processing for direct marketing purposes, it is positive that the Regulation acknowledges that data processing for direct marketing purposes is considered as a legitimate interest.
However, the text still raises uncertainty regarding the lawfulness of these legitimate business practices. Publishers’ relations with readers and subscribers could still be seriously hampered by the considerable extension of information obligations, the legal uncertainty for further data processing, and the threats of heavy fines in case of infringements.
Finally, EMMA and ENPA also acknowledge that, on the one hand, stricter rules for profiling which could have severely prevented press publishers from finding new customers and advertisers have not been retained whereas, on the other hand, pseudonymisation has been taken into account when assessing the compatibility of purposes.
Press publishers are now looking ahead towards the final adoption of the proposed agreement and will continue to work together with all relevant authorities in order to ensure that the enforcement of this new Regulation fully respects press freedom and does not further affect the sustainability of their business models, both in print and digital.
EMMA, the European Magazine Media Association, is the unique and complete representation of Europe’s magazine media, which is today enjoyed by millions of consumers on various platforms, encompassing both paper and digital formats. EMMA represents 15.000 publishing houses, publishing 50.000 magazine titles across Europe in print and digital. For more information, visit www.magazinemedia.eu
ENPA is an international non-profit organisation representing publishers of newspapers and news media on all platforms. ENPA represents over 5,200 national, regional and local newspaper titles, published in many EU Member States, plus Norway, Switzerland and Serbia. For more information: www.enpa.be
For further information contact:
Pierre Dagard
EMMA EU Affairs Officer
+32 2 536 0605
Sophie Scrive
ENPA Deputy Executive Director
+32 2 551 0190