June

At the EU 's Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting on 3 and 4 March, the Justice Minsters had a debate on the proposed EU Data Protection Regulation. They broadly supported the draft provisions regarding the territorial scope of the Regulation, which would make the Regulation applicable, for example, to U.S. companies with customers or users of their services in the EU. According to the Council 's press release, Ministers agreed that more technical work will need to be done on international data transfers and alternative models will need to be studied in-depth. The Council confirmed that work will continue at a technical level on the basis of the progress achieved so far on: pseudonymisation as an element of the risk-based approach, portability of personal data for the private sector, and obligations of controllers and processors. There were varied views on profiling. The majority of delegations consider that the scope of profiling should be limited to regulating automated decision-making as per the current DP Directive, but some delegations say that there should be specific provisions on the creation and use of profiles. The EU Justice and Home Affairs Council will next meet 5-6 June.

"London is the undisputed business capital of Europe, according to research carried out by Deloitte. The Fortune Global 500, an annual ranking of the top 500 corporations worldwide, shows that 40% of companies have their European headquarters in London. Paris has the second highest number of European HQs with just 8% of the Fortune 500. Of all the high-skill workers in Europe's business capitals, 46% are based in London. The figures suggest London has a larger concentration of skilled workers in Europe than New York does in North America, with 31% of North American skilled workers based in the Big Apple. ""London is a magnet for business and business people,"" said Deliotte London senior partner Knowles-Cutler. ""One of our recent and related studies found that London leads the world when it comes to employing people in high-skill, knowledge-based sectors. Of the 22 high-skill sectors identified, London leads in 12 of these, employing 1.5 million people."" London is also popular for non-European businesses looking for headquarters in Europe. Knowles-Cutler added the reasons for this included the prominence of English as the language of business and the relative political and financial stability of the UK."

"Qualifications are less likely to be checked the further away from graduation day a candidate gets, but the Higher Education Degree Datacheck (HEDD) warns of temptation to embellish on CVs due to pressure from the new '2.1 ' wave of graduates. Of the 20,288 enquiries received since HEDD - the government-backed degree verification service - 76% have been to check qualifications of those who graduated after 2000 and almost half are to verify graduates who left university within the last four years. Just 16% of enquiries were to undertake checks on those who graduated in the 1990s, and the number was halved (8%) for those leaving university before the '90s. Eight per cent of HEDD enquiries have been classified as 'unverified '. While reasons for this include incomplete or incorrect information supplied by candidates, such as married names instead of maiden names, there is also evidence of subject changes, grade inflation, fake certificates and bogus institutions. ""Graduates who are further on in their career have more opportunity to blatantly lie, exaggerate or bend the truth a little more than their more recent counterparts simply because they are not being checked out,"" said Jayne Rowley leader of the HEDD initiative at Graduate Prospects."