February

The Ministry of Justice has published a draft law to amend Act No. 78-17 on Data Processing, Data Files and Individual Liberties in light of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as well as the Data Protection Directive with Respect to Law Enforcement (Directive (EU).

Marc Lempérière, Partner at Almain Avocats, noted that the draft law is "limited in its scope and leaves the task of redrafting the entire Act to the Government through ordinance procedures to increase its legibility and remedy problems of coherence with the rest of French legislation."

Therefore, French citizens will need to read the GDPR and the Act together to determine which legislative provisions are applicable.

Lempérière noted that the draft law provides for prior authorizations for the use of genetic or biometric data by public authorities, allows data subjects to entrust the defense of their interests regarding infringements of the GDPR before the French data protection authority to associations, and that the French Government will issue a decree listing the data processing that are exempt from the obligation to notify data breaches in view of the risk this may represent to national security."

The Dutch government has sent the GDPR Implementation Bill to the Parliament.

The main theme of the bill is that the GDPR is implemented in a "policy-neutral manner," meaning that the bill continues all current law, insofar as is allowed under the GDPR. The bill also re-establishes the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) and governs its organization and additional powers. It also notes that the DPA will also be allowed to enforce the GDPR and the Implementation Act. One important part of the bill is several exceptions for the processing of special data in The Netherlands.

While the current Data Protection Act contains specific exceptions per type of special data to be processed by a specific category of controllers or limit the processing of such data to specific purposes, all such exceptions are maintained in this bill.

The Recruitment Risk Index by Xref recently found that 97% of Canadians denied asking a referee to exaggerate on their behalf but 68% of employers said they were convinced they were being lied to when they checked the references by phone.

The survey said that 38% of those surveyed have been named by a friend for employment reference, but 50% suggest it 's more important to put forth a "good reference" versus a direct manager.

Results also revealed that Facebook has more use for employers than LinkedIn or Google, those 30-49 are more likely to exaggerate details and millennial jobseekers are among the most anxious of those surveyed.