Andrus Ansip, the candidate to lead the European Union’s Digital Internal Market, is willing to suspend the safe harbor agreement with the U.S. if Europe’s security concerns are not addressed.
The safe harbor agreement regulates the transfer of Europeans’ personal data to the U.S. It affects thousands of technology companies including the likes of Google, Facebook and Microsoft. However, Europeans are less confident in the way American firms handle their data especially since the NSA spying scandal.
“Safe Harbor is not secure. The agreement has yet to live up to its name,” Ansip said during an Oct. 6 interview with members of the European parliament in Brussels.
Ansip is the former prime minister of Estonia, one of the most connected countries in the world. His background and support for security, ending roaming fees and net neutrality earned him praise from some members of Europe’s parliament, especially following some controversial remarks by Germany’s Gunther Oettinger, the candidate to lead the Digital Economy agenda.
Green MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht told EurActiv that Ansip was the “real” digital commissioner.
Ansip did appear to take helm in his interview, saying that Oettinger, along with Vera Jourova, the candidate in charge of justice, consumers and gender equality, will help provide organization and management.
“I will handle this just as I did as prime minister. I will lead, coordinate and guide,” Ansip said.
As the digital leader, Ansip will spearhead efforts to move the EU toward a single digital market, and he talked about the benefits of erasing IT borders and digitizing public services — efforts that he estimated could create 900,000 new jobs by 2020.
But, Ansip emphasized that security underlies it all.
“We have to have trust if the full value of the digital environment is to be utilized,” he said. “Everybody should have the same freedoms and protection online as they do offline. They should enjoy full confidence that private data is protected and secure.”
More telecom news from Europe:
Swisscom reportedly considering sale of Fastweb to Vodafone. The Italian broadband firm Fastweb is worth €5 billion ($6.33 billion), and telco giant Vodafone has eyed taking it over before only to have its efforts rejected by Swisscom. Now sources say the Swiss carrier is in talks with UBS, Vodafone’s adviser, over a possible deal.
France’s Altice is looking to buy Portugal Telecom. Sources said that Altice, which is the holding company of billionaire Patrick Drahi, is in talks to acquire PT and an agreement could be reached within weeks. The deal could break up PT’s merger with Brazilian carrier Oi, though the deal would need Oi’s backing.
European Commission finds no evidence that telecom operators throttled Internet traffic. An investigation into allegations that Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica and Orange were slowing high-bandwidth traffic on their networks to hurt competitors turned up empty. The probe that highlighted net neutrality issues was started by a complaint from Cogent Communications and other Internet service providers, and led to the telecom operators having their offices raided in July. Cogent remained un-appeased, and CEO Dave Schaeffer told PCWorld that “There was probably political pressure from three large operators. I’m sure that weighs on the decision.”
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