GDPR versus Swiss Data Privacy Act
GDPR will be valid by the end of May. The complete revision of the Swiss Data Protection Act should have been completed by August 2018. That won't work now. In January of this year, the State Policy Commission of the National Council decided to stage the revision. Media release 12 January 2018: "The division of the bill allows the implementation of EU law (Directive 2016/680 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data in the field of criminal law) required by the Schengen agreements to be discussed in advance within a certain period. Subsequently, the complete revision of the Data Protection Act could be tackled without time pressure. In this way, the Commission could do justice to the great complexity of the issue." Presumably it will not even suffice for the year 2019 that the Swiss Data Protection Act will be adapted analogously by GDPR. In any case, Switzerland will not have an adequate data protection law in comparison to the EU. Are we then to be classified in the same way as Albania, Georgia, Gibraltar, Montenegro, Russia, the USA? Is this a blessing or a curse for Switzerland? Does the Swiss state leave the economy and its citizens to their own devices when it comes to personality protection? We might see it when a different wind blows around our country from the end of May 2018.
Visionär - Information Security Guru - Aufklärer - Advisor (& Managing Director) Informationssicherheit & Datenschutz - Hand in Hand
6yToday I see more and more the cases that it doesn't care if you are outside the EU (e.g. Switzerland) or not, because EU companies started sending contract addition to their vendors outside the EU (e.g. Switzerland)...as a part of the SLAs...that they have to sign, that they are GDPR compliant. If they don't, they are no vendors anymore... So also in Switzerland, it's more and more a question of being "compliant" or not but more of being a vendor/part in the EU market anymore!..or not.
CH General Counsel & Head of Compliance, MLaw UZH, Attorney-at-Law, LL.M., DAS General Management | Data Protection, FinTech, etc.
6yThanks Ivan – I would assume that a substantial amount of Swiss corporations will nevertheless adapt their internal policies and guidelines so that they are in line with GDPR.