POPI UPdate (January 2012)

Nothing has changed in on the POPI landscape South Africa since our last update in November 2011.

However, a lot has changed in the EU. POPI has been heavily influenced by the EU Data Protection Legislation.

On 25 January 2012 the European Commission released the documents that are intended to frame the new data protection regime in the EU. There are two main  documents, and a series of background papers. The two main documents are:

1.  A proposed Regulation, which would apply directly to organizations and individuals, and will govern most data processing activities in the 27 EU Member States; and
2. A proposed Directive, which would provide the basic requirements for police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters, and will have to be implemented in the national laws of the EU Member States.

The next step is for these documents to be discussed by the European Parliament and the EU Member States. The Regulation and Directive should only come into effect sometime in 2014 (two years after they have been adopted – the date being dependent on the discussions and changes).

We wonder to what extent these documents will impact on the current deliberations of the Parliamentary Technical Committee over POPI and whether this will further delay the enactment of POPI (which we previously suggested might happen in Q2 2012).