January

"It's a fact of modern life that we can't escape the far-reaching tentacles of internet search engines. But hope for those harbouring any skeletons came when the European Court of Justice ruled that search engines must erase, on request, search results that are ""inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant"". This followed a EU directive that seeks to protect an individual's ""right to be forgotten"". The ruling means that anyone can ask search engines to hide them in a specific search results, effectively ""erasing"" the reference to them. But it is not a perfect solution - it only affects European-based search engines and doesn't force a site to permanently delete a page."

"The European data protection directive is already one of the most stringent data protection laws in the world. Europe is set to have an even more rigorous data protection law with the introduction of the new General Data Protection Regulation (the ""Regulation""). The most recent indication from the European Commission is that the Regulation is intended to be finalised in the first quarter of 2015. Although the European Parliament has reached an agreement on certain aspects of the Regulation, there are some outstanding issues which are proving to be more difficult, such as the ""one-stop shop"" mechanism."

The European Parliament voted to approve the President of the European Commission 's selections for his team of European Commissioners. Jean-Claude Juncker 's picks received strong endorsement from MEPs, with 423 in favour, 209 against, and 67 abstentions. Even so, he was forced to amend his proposal ahead of the vote after a few of his first picks failed to win over hostile MEPs during Parliamentary confirmation hearings. The new Commissioners will take office on November 3rd, although questions remain over the division of authority within the new Commission with respect to privacy and data protection.