Parliamentary question

Written question to the European Commission

The recent high-profile report by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties underlines the longstanding concerns about companies processing our personal data for advertisement purposes. There is still a clear need for investigations regarding their compliance with EU law. The report shows that the tracking data and real-world location data of EU citizens is being shared 197 billion times a day in Europe alone, as a result of real-time bidding for online advertisement allocation.

In this context, we ask the Commission:

1. How will it investigate any potential compliance issues with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation?

2. Does it agree that these findings could indicate probable evidence of non-compliance of Google’s advertising practices with EU law?

3. On what basis does it maintain its decision to not open an infringement procedure against Ireland, if the Irish Data Protection Commission is not adequately equipped to start an investigation into this matter?