Greetings from Brussels!

I write to you from the other side of the Atlantic this week after a productive IAPP Europe Data Protection Congress in the heart of the EU. Our first DPC since the application of the region’s General Data Protection Regulation, it was great to get a sense of the pressing issues and concerns over here in these robust times for privacy.

No doubt, the GDPR remains at the top of the list.

As I outlined in a dispatch from the event Wednesday, the EU’s data protection authorities are receiving increased notifications and complaints while actively constructing a one-stop-shop mechanism that will not only seek to regulate the GDPR proportionately and consistently, but efficiently, as well. The EU’s DPAs now wear two hats: one as national regulators and the other as members of the European Data Protection Board. And though it will be unlikely we’ll see any major GDPR-related enforcement actions in the waning weeks of 2018, things will likely ramp up in the new year. According to both the Data Protection Commission of Ireland and French DPA, the CNIL, 2019 will likely bring with it some GDPR enforcement actions.

But it wasn’t all GDPR all the time here in Brussels. The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, which may well be part of the GDPR’s ripple effect, garnered some interest over here, as well. Will the CCPA force federal privacy regulation in the next year? Thinking back to last year’s DPC, I could not have imagined we’d even mention such a possibility.

And, of course, it was hard to miss some of this week’s developments back home, including comments Wednesday from California’s attorney general, who unsurprisingly pushed back against any federal preemption of the CCPA. Plus, the Senate Commerce committee held a hearing Tuesday with all five FTC commissioners. For more details on the FTC hearing, the IAPP’s Ryan Chiavetta reported on the big takeaways. The agency is facing some criticism of late for the effectiveness of its regulatory power and consent decrees. Recently, the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Joe Jerome offered a recommendation for improvement of “America’s top privacy cop” for Privacy Perspectives, you can find it below.

I’m only scratching the surface, though, to be honest. I’m beat and ready for home.