Good morning,
There are many risks when opening Pandora's Box. And one of the main risks of reopening legislation is that it becomes exposed to political manoeuvring and private interests.
One of the most iconic EU laws, the famous EU data protection regulation, or GDPR, has been the latest victim of the European Commission's emphasis on "competitiveness through simplification".
In its May 2025 Single Market Simplification on Wednesday, the Brussels executive proposed scrapping reporting obligations for any organisation with fewer than 750 employees, unless their data use is considered 'high risk'.
The tweaks are deemed "cosmetic changes" for some lobby groups that expect a bigger overhaul, arguing that simplification plans would only ease the situation to 0.2 percent of EU companies.
But privacy campaigners have questions about whether this genuine simplification may risk providing a 'carte blanche' to organisations handling special categories of data.
"Data rights do not become less important when the controller is smaller, and people’s vulnerability to harm does not shrink accordingly," a group of 108 advocacy groups said in an open letter, which calls instead for greater enforcement of current rules on recurrent offenders.
And in a letter to the commission, both the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) asked "to better evaluate the impact" of these changes to ensure that the proposal provides "a proportionate and fair balance" between the protection of people's personal data and private interests.
As the GDPR turns seven years old this weekend, let's remember that the essence of that law was based on the idea of data protection as a fundamental right, not conditional on organisational size or perceived risk.
- Elena Sánchez Nicolás, editor-in-chief
This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.
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