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The Article 29 Working Party is and advisory body set up under the Data Privacy Directive 95/46/EC and is easygoing of representatives of the national data protection authorities (DPA), the EDPS and the European Commission. Its role is to advise the Commission on general data protection matters as well as laws from the EU that may affect data privacy. It also promotes the uniform operation of the Data Protection Directive across the entire EU.
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The European Data Protection Supervisor is the independent supervisory authority set up in 2014 by the Parliament and Council to advise EU administrations on the processing of personal data as well as supervising these bodies to ensure compliance to their own regulations. The EDPS also handles complaints and monitors new technologies related to the processing of personal data.
The ordinary legislative procedure covers the majority of what is known as secondary law, which is derived from the principles and objectives set out in EU Treaties and includes regulations, directives and decisions.It is always critical to note that the GDPR is a regulation, which is immediately applicable across the Union,rather than a directive, which must be transposed into national law by each individual member state.The process begins with a bid by the Commission, which is to be either adopted, rejected, or amended through a process of co-decision between the Parliament and the Council. The Parliament is first sent the proposal in order to make its first reading, to which is accepts or makes amendments to, before passing it on to the Council for it’s own first reading. If the body adopts the Parliament’s position, the legislation is passed, however if there are any further amendments made by the Council, all three bodies meet for the Trilogue negotiations. It is possible for a piece of legislation to continue on to a second reading by both the Parliament and the Council, and even still a final stage known as the Conciliation stage. If the legislation fails to be adopted at any stage, it can only be resurrected as a new proposal from the Commission, to repeat the entire process again
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The GDPR was initially proposed by the Commission in January of 2012, amended by the Parliament in its first reading in March of 2014, and most recently amended by the Council in its first reading in June of 2015. The first trilogue meeting was held on the 24th of June, with a stated goal from the three EU bodies to reach an agreement by the end of 2015. However, these negotiations can be extended by agreement among the leaders of each party as per the rules set out by the Joint Declaration on Practical Arrangements for the Codecision Procedure, which govern the trilogue meetings. A more robust timeline of events for the GDPR can be found here, and a discussion of the topics likely to have beenthe most intensely debated can be found here.
A political agreement was made on 15 December 2015, leaving the regulation tobe signed in January 2016by the Presidents and Secretaries General of both the Parliament and the Council, at which time the text will be published in the Official Journal of the European Union. The regulation will be directly binding throughout the EU following the two year grace period beginning on the date of publishing.