The European Commission (EC) wants all companies that store data on European citizens, whether based in the EU or not, to be subject to an updated version of the Data Protection Directive due to be unveiled in January. EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding and EC vice president Ilse Aigner stated, “We both believe that companies who direct their services to European consumers should be subject to EU data protection laws. Otherwise, they should not be able to do business in our internal market.” In addition, they expressed their desire for consumers to have more rights to protect their data, such as being able to provide explicit consent before any data is used by businesses and having the right to delete their data at any point.
