European Institute

Peter Hustinx, European Data Protection Supervisor, addressed the transatlantic debate over data privacy, focusing on the EU’s existing data protection system and the risks posed by constant technological innovation as well as increased demands by law enforcement officials on both sides of the Atlantic for deeper and more immediate data exchanges. Paul Rosenzweig, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, Department of Homeland Security, offered the U.S. perspective on building an effective law enforcement framework for the sharing of personal data. Yael Weinman, Counsel for International Consumer Protection, Federal Trade Commission gave the consumer protection aspect. The meeting was moderated by James Halpert, Partner, DLA Piper.

The revived constitution for the European Union has renewed interest in prospects for its under-achieving Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Timely and welcome as this interest is, it is dismaying to see that it is being spurred by legal mandates and still-modest institutional reforms. It is the acute external pressures that menace Europeans’ wellbeing that ought to compel and inform moves to re-engage on the pressing issue of whether, and how, Europeans can act in concert to cope with an unruly world. The Middle East in particular presents a set of intersecting, combustible crises that pose clear and serious danger to the continent’s safety, stability and economic (energy) security. Iraq, Iran, Palestine/Israel, Lebanon – each is spinning further and further out of control. Each is aggravated by the serial failures of American policies that have dominated the action while queering the pitch for tentative European diplomacy (unilateral, trilateral or collective).