Businesses had mixed reactions to the new regulation. Why was this?
Emmanuelle Bartoli. Indeed, businesses had been expecting a lot from the regulation that originally aimed to harmonize all the principles relevant to personal data protection. However in reality, more than fifty provisions actually refer to guidelines that have to be prepared, either by the European Board of Data Protection, or via European legislators. Thus the regulation hasn’t held to its promise to harmonize. There are certainly major points in common but that will not hinder the existence of underlying national specificities. Added to this is the fact that data protection has close ties with culture and the regulation will not make that disappear. In other words, the Anglo-Saxon, German, or French approaches to the topic will not be smoothly aligned solely by virtue of adopting a regulation. Data protection will continue to be based on the competent national authorities’ own understanding of data protection.