Brussels has been bustling for the past six weeks. Following the European elections, member state governments have been negotiating the makeup of the incoming EU leadership, political parties the composition of political groups, parliamentary committees and others.
On the former, we now know who will assume the four key roles. Portugal's former prime minister António Costa will be the new president of the European Council, taking office 1 Dec. Ursula von der Leyen obtained member states' endorsement for a second term as president of the European Commission, approved by the European Parliament 18 July during its constitutive plenary session. Kaja Kallas, current prime minister of Estonia, is set to lead the EU's External Action Service pending a successful parliamentary hearing in September. She is well known in that house, having served as an MEP from 2014-18, during which time she was very active on digital policy.
The three leaders represent a balance of political affiliations — conservatives, socialists and liberals, respectively — and geographies — with a heavy-weight, a southern and a Baltic member state.
While we await the formal composition of the Commissioners' college, the action will rest with the European Parliament, which just reelected Roberta Metsola for her second term as its president.
The European legislative apparatus tends to look like a railway system — probably O gauge, for those model train aficionados doubling as privacy pros who may wonder. Its engineering is intricate, it has many stations, many parallel tracks, many vehicles and travelers navigating it every day, and it doesn't seem to have a natural endpoint. It is also highly standardized, much like the functioning of the European Parliament, and it is not meant to ever be at a halt, minus the occasional recess or election season.
Even the notion of predictability applies to the EU parliamentary apparatus — both in a stark procedural fashion, as well as in its political nature.
Looking back to 2020 when the Commission began unveiling policy priorities and legislative proposals for the term that was just starting, we knew within a few years we would see a new line emerge called "data sharing," populated with stations named the Digital Governance Act and the European Health Data Space. The IAPP developed a European Parliament term recap of the main files delivered relevant to privacy and data governance. This overview includes files on data access and sharing, cybersecurity requirements, liability regimes, artificial intelligence and online platform regulation, and more.
There are two main factors at play. First, any viable piece of legislation that makes it to the negotiations stage will already have a long history. It will likely have been mentioned months if not years prior in a European Commission roadmap, review clause, impact assessment or, less frequently, in a European Parliament resolution or initiative report. The second factor is that legislation never dies in Brussels — once it becomes a proposal, it is on a track and moves forward, the pace will vary but 99% of the time, it will reach its destination.
Isabelle Roccia, CIPP/E, is the managing director, Europe, for the IAPP.
