European Commission refers Greece and Spain to EU Court for not transposing EU data protection law

The European Commission has decided to refer Greece and Spain to the European Court of Justice for failing to transpose the Data Protection Law Enforcement Directive, Directive (EU) 2016/680), part of the GDPR reform. The European Commission’s decision to start an infringement procedure was justified by the fact that by failing to transpose the directive, these countries created different level of protection of peoples’ rights and freedoms and hampers data exchanges between Greece and Spain on one side and other Member States who transposed the Directive on the other side. According to MediaNama, the European Commission had started infringement proceedings against seven member states (Spain, Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Latvia, the Netherlands, and Slovenia) in July 2018 by sending a formal notice to respective national authorities.