Denmark aims to break EU privacy chief deadlock before year's end

Denmark is working to find a solution to the ongoing standoff between EU lawmakers and national governments over who should be the EU institutions' top privacy official, officials have told Euronews.

The mandate of the current European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) expired on 5 December 2024. Denmark, which holds the rotating chairmanship of the national governments for one more month, said it wants to conclude the EDPS talks by year's end.

However, no meeting with EU lawmakers has yet been scheduled, people familiar with the matter told Euronews.

The EDPS, a role established in 2004, publishes opinions on EU legislative proposals and weighs in on upcoming digital legislation. It also checks whether EU institutions themselves respect personal data rules.

The European Parliament and the member states have not been able to agree on a successor for the outgoing EDPS, Wojciech Wiewiórowski, since early this year, when the European Commission held hearings with a shortlist of candidates.

The Commission shortlisted four contenders who appeared in hearings last January, and the Parliament’s LIBE committee voted to appoint long-time Commission official Bruno Gencarelli, from Italy. However, the member states are backing Wiewiórowski for another mandate.

Wiewiórowski, a former head of the Polish data protection office who has been in the job since 2019, remains in office for the time being.

Gencarelli spent 12 years working in managerial roles on data protection at the Commission, and was formerly a head of the executive's International Affairs and Data Flows Unit. His last job was to advise EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders, whose mandate ended in December last year.

He has been on leave from the EU civil service while the selection process continues.

Simplification efforts

The EDPS's job has increased in importance over the past years. The appointee is expected to play a supervisory role as the European Commission works to simplify tech legislation with measures like the digital omnibus package presented this week, which will amend the existing AI Act.

Isabelle Roccia, Managing Director Europe at the IAPP, told Euronews that “whoever gets the job will find himself in a key advising position as the Commission kick-starts its digital simplification agenda.”

“That voice of reason will matter to ensure a nuanced debate to reconcile competitiveness objectives with the European value-based acquis in the data protection space,” Roccia added.

It remains to be seen if Denmark can schedule any meeting with lawmakers in the midst of a tight end-of-year schedule. The last meeting with representatives of the Parliament that tried to break the deadlock took place early this summer.

The office of Spanish centre-right lawmaker Javier Zarzalejos, the chair of the Parliament's Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE), who is in charge of arranging the meetings on the Parliament side, did not respond to Euronews when asked for comment.

The Commission previously told Euronews that it is not in a position to comment on the current state of the procedure, and that there is no legal deadline for the selection process.

It is not the first time that the appointment of a new EDPS has been held up. In 2014, the selection panel concluded that none of the candidates proposed at the time had the qualities required for the job.