Archibald Preuschat reports:
As negotiations over new European Union data-protection rules head into their final stretch, German telecommunications and Internet service providers are pushing for tough rules that could roll back the dominance in Europe of U.S. technology giants like Google Inc. and Facebook Inc.
European Commission officials say they hope to wrap up talks—which have been ongoing for several years—by the end of 2015, part of a push to legislate a single digital market to replace the EU’s current mix of 28 separate state laws on crucial issues including data protection and copyright.
But German firms, who feel they have been twice bitten—once by revelations of widespread NSA spying and again by the growing dominance of Silicon Valley firms—aren’t waiting, exerting heavy pressure, both publicly and behind-the-scenes, to speed up the talks and to make sure the resulting legislation is in Europe’s favor.
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