Let us introduce you to GDPR Today – your online hub for staying tuned to the (real) life of EU data protection law. Every two months we will be publishing statistics showing how the GDPR is being applied across Europe. More often we will be sharing relevant news – from legal guidelines and decisions to data breaches, new codes of conduct, important business developments, and memes.

Thanks to Panoptykon’s initiative bank customers in Poland will have the right to receive explanation of their creditworthiness. It’s the first right of this kind in Europe and a higher standard than the one envisioned in the GDPR.

Jan Nowak, previously a general manager at the DPA’s office and a long-term member of PiS, the ruling party, will become the new chair of the Polish Data Protection Authority. The nomination raised controversy as to whether Jan Nowak meets the legal requirements for this position.

Poland has a history of interesting revolutions, including its famous, peaceful transition in 1989. No one, however, reasonably expected that the country would become the hub of a very unusual, civic revolt: a grassroots, non-partisan—some even say “cultural”—movement against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

Why do we need the data protection reform? How to protect right to personal data in new digital age? Could new, more harmonized law lead to better and more up-to-date protection? Katarzyna Szymielewicz (Panoptykon Foundation), Kirsten Fiedler (European Digital Rights) and Jan Albrecht (member of the European Parliament) discuss main problematic issues in current data protection framework (based on data protection directive from 1995) and solutions proposed by civil society and European Commission for the new regulation.