Today, Brave and a coalition of almost 40 businesses and organizations urge European Governments to break the deadlock on the ePrivacy Regulation in an open letter.

Tomorrow, Ministers will hold a key meeting at which the ePrivacy Regulation will be discussed[1]. We, and many businesses and leading NGOs recognize the need to reform the ePrivacy regime to protect businesses, consumers, and citizens. Without reform, business will operate in an uncertain legal framework, and key security protections may also be neglected. Yet, despite repeated privacy scandals, this reform is currently stalled.

The eyes of the world regard Europe. European data protection is emerging as a de facto global standard. A community of nations that accounts for more than half the world’s GDP have introduced or are now contemplating the introduction of GDPR standards.[2]

However, the European privacy and data protection regime remains incomplete. If ministers fail to agree clear and necessary protections for the security of communications and devices, the light of Europe’s example will be dimmed. Reforms elsewhere, including the potential for a federal general privacy law in the United States, may be extinguished.

We urge the TTE Council is break its deadlock, and build upon the work of the European Parliament.

The privacy protections of the ePrivacy Regulation are important to business and to users, and Brave is committed to their realization. In July, Brave wrote to the Council of Ministers to support the draft ePrivacy Regulation’s “Privacy by default” protection, and to prohibit “cookie walls”. In September, in Euractiv, we exposed the misleading research that lobbyists working for the data brokering and adtech tracking industry had sent to European lawmakers in the hope of convincing them to abandon the ePrivacy Regulation’s new privacy protections. Today, we at Brave are pleased to collaborate with a broad community of businesses and organizations that urge clarity for business and decency for users.

We signatories are innovative digital companies, including Brave, WeTransfer, Tresorit, Qwant, together with privacy and consumer organizations such as Privacy International, European Digital Rights Initiative, BEUC, the Open Rights Group, and the Panoptykon Foundation. The full list of our colleagues who signed this letter is below. I am particularly grateful to Estelle Masse of Access Now for facilitating collaboration by the organisations and businesses who signed this letter.

Author: Dr Johnny Ryan.

Media contact:

Catherine Corre

+1 650 787 4770

catherine@brave.com