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The Personal Information Protection Law, or PIPL, imposes stringent obligations of a similar standard to the GDPR and will take effect on November 1, 2021.

By Hui Xu, Kieran Donovan, and Bianca Lee

On August 20, 2021, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress adopted the Personal Information Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China (PIPL), the first legislation dedicated to protecting personal information in China. PIPL will take effect on November 1, 2021. PIPL previously…

By Gail Crawford, Ulrich Wuermeling, Calum Docherty

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR or Regulation) will become applicable in one year, as of May 25, 2018. A lot has happened since we set out the key provisions of the Regulation last year. As companies implement compliance programmes in efforts to protect data subjects and avoid hefty enforcement penalties, each EU Member State government has to pass implementation laws. Furthermore, regulators are slowly providing guidance on how to apply and interpret the GDPR.

What is happening in the EU Member States?LockRecord_384x144

The GDPR was drafted to “harmonise the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons in respect of processing activities and to ensure the free flow of personal data between Member States” (Recital 3). Yet the GDPR itself provides a lot of leeway for Member States in its implementation, including room for derogations from at least 50 articles. This “margin of manoeuvre” (Recital 10) creates a degree of uncertainty for data controllers and data processors, and there are some areas where companies (especially those processing sensitive personal data, where Member States have the most flexibility) will need to wait and respond to what Member State governments are proposing.