Data protection directive

Electronics giants Electrolux, Philips and the Bosch and Siemens Group said yesterday that the European Commission must speed up the ecodesign legislation to help businesses and consumers save billions of euros through more efficient products.

The migration of computing into a cloud of massive data centres spread all over the world is giving regulators a headache as they find themselves on the back foot of an industry-driven trend.

The high-tech cloud computing sector in Europe

New EU data protection rules could threaten growth in the high-tech cloud computing sector in Europe, says a report published yesterday by a leading industry group.

The reform of EU data protection rules is of particular interest to countries like the United States, whose companies may have to abide by stricter provisions to do business in Europe. Nevertheless intense lobbying from the United States has in some cases watered down the draft legislation.

Web firms will have to seek Internet users' explicit consent previously downloading their personal data and must make it possible for private information to be deleted for good from the web, according to a European Commission strategy on data protection to be unveiled today.