digital economy regulation

This edition of the EU Timeline highlights noteworthy events and the status of the most important regulatory developments at EU level for our clients over the next six months.

This report recaps EU regulatory developments affecting the digital economy last week and lists the events taking place this week.

According to the Advocate General's opinion, search engines are subject to the prohibition on processing sensitive data under the former Data Protection Directive, but they do not have to pre-emptively ensure that they do not link to such data. When considering a delisting request, search engines can evoke the public interest and freedom of expression to refuse to delist.

The Italian 2019 Budget Law introduced a new tax on digital services (so called web-tax). However, it still requires an implementing decree to become operational. The new tax will replace a previous tax on services provided by electronic means which has now been abolished.

The Advocate General (AG) of the Court of Justice of the European Union gave an opinion in favour of limiting the territorial scope of the right to be forgotten to the EU in the particular case at hand. However, the AG favoured that providers of search engines apply geo-blocking to prevent EU users from having access through non-EU domains to the delisted search results.

This report recaps Cullen International’s coverage of EU regulatory developments affecting the digital economy that happened just before and after the winter break. It also lists events taking place this week.