The European Union (EU) has voted on Tuesday, November 14, to pass the new Consumer Protection Cooperation regulation, a new EU-wide applicable law that gives extra power to national consumer protection agencies, but which also contains a vaguely worded clause that also grants them the power to block and take down websites without judicial oversight.
The new law “establishes overreaching Internet blocking measures that are neither proportionate nor suitable for the goal of protecting consumers and come without mandatory judicial oversight,” Member of the European Parliament Julia Reda said in a speech in the European Parliament Plenary during a last ditch effort to amend the law.
“According to the new rules, national consumer protection authorities can order any unspecified third party to block access to websites without requiring judicial authorization,” Reda added later in the day on her blog.
This new law is an EU regulation and not a directive, meaning its obligatory for all EU states, which do not have to individually adopt it.
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Robin Edgar