EU eyes big fines for privacy breaches

Businesses breaching European Union privacy rules will face fines of up to 5 per cent of their global turnover pursuant to this agreement sweeping proposals to be unveiled then and there month.

The proposals

The proposals would bolster significantly the EU's powers on combating data protection breaches, just as when companies sell customer data to third parties without authorisation or fail to adequately protect information held by social networks and "cloud computing" services.

A draft of the proposals seen by the Financial Times calls for all companies with more than 250 employees to dedicate staff to data protection issues, something currently not required in all European countries.