The European Parliament “concerned” about the laxity of the Irish authorities in the protection of Europeans’ data

Sep. 23 () –

A delegation of MEPs from the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee has been “concerned” about the laxity of the Irish authorities in the implementation of the Data Protection regulation and the ‘single window’ mechanism , as it has 98 percent of unresolved cross-border cases.

“We continue to be concerned that the Irish data protection authority is a bottleneck in the ‘single window’ mechanism”, said Citizens MEP, Maite Pagazaurtundua, after the expedition mission to Ireland, the country where it has its European headquarters large technological platforms such as Facebook, Google or Tiktok.

The ‘single window’ mechanism is the procedure whereby companies active in several Member States only have to deal with a single data protection authority, that of the Member State where their headquarters are located.

In fact, the Irish Authority has 164 open cross-border cases of alleged infringements, but in three and a half years of applying the new European Regulation, it has only issued four draft decisions, leaving almost 98 per cent of cases unresolved.

The mission lasted three days and aimed to improve the functioning of the Data Protection regulation as well as the performance of the Irish data protection commission, which currently suffers from a significant bottleneck of unresolved cases.

The visit was planned following Parliament’s resolution on the application of the GDPR of March 25, 2021 and a hearing in March this year that highlighted the fact that the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) is “the worst bottleneck” in the application of the Regulation.

In a further step, Pagazaurtundua has highlighted the importance of addressing personal data protection problems, which also refer to “the fundamental rights of hundreds of millions of citizens in the EU”.

The Citizens MEP has also expressed her determination to continue working to open the eyes of technology companies and regulatory and supervisory authorities to the addictive capacity of certain technological products, as well as Artificial Intelligence in minors.