[oc_spacer height=”15″]The European GDPR has been effective for one month today. On the occasion, we take a quick glance at the state of affairs.
Many businesses were sceptical of 25 May. After a two-year transition period, the new data protection law finally came into effect. Read on to find out how German businesses are handling its implementation and what advantages and disadvantages they see.
“The Mountains of Files Suddenly Grew”
Data protection authorities across Germany bemoan the massive increase of work – which had been forecasted before the effective data – while not enough jobs in the authorities were created to cope with the heavy workload. In the face of the large number of GDPR complaints “one could say that a tremor is currently going through the data protection authorities,” Johannes Caspar, the data protection officer of Hamburg, notes. According to Caspar, the mountains of files suddenly grew. Many of the incoming requests can be traced to misinformation. Apparently, the two-year transition period was not enough to prepare all businesses sufficiently for the new legal situation. In fact, according to a poll conducted by Technology Review and Statista, until 25 May 2018 only 24% of German businesses had fully implemented European GDPR.
Challenges and Effects of European GDPR
For German businesses, the biggest challenge of implementing European GDPR is the assessment of the total effort implementation will take. Additionally, more than half of businesses, namely 56%, are insecure in legal matters. 40% complain about the demanding technical realisation and 32% miss practical implementation assistance.
A total of 70% see more uniform conditions of competition within the EU as an advantage of the GDPR. Furthermore, 51% deem the regulation a competitive advantage for European businesses, while 43% also experience benefits for their own business.
In contrast, 60% of businesses polled agree that the regulation makes a large number of their business processes more complicated. 38% see the new data law as a decelerating factor for digitisation of the economy.
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