Mikołaj Barczentewicz on the EDPB’s ‘Pay or Consent’ Ruling

ICLE Senior Scholar Miko?aj Barczentewicz was quoted by Ireland’s Business Post in a story about the European Data Privacy Board’s ruling on whether so-called “pay-or-consent” business models satisfy the General Data Protection Regulation. You can read the full piece here.

Miko?aj Barczentewicz, an associate professor in law at the University of Surrey, said it was likely that the EDPB will probably have to make a binding decision, rather than just issuing an opinion, on the legality of consent or pay.

He called the opinion an “unhappy compromise” between regulators who were strongly opposed to the model – such as the Norwegian data protection agency – and those with a softer view on it like the Irish DPC.

And he criticised the wording of the opinion, calling it “extremely vague and conditional”.

“One headline version of this is that this is illegal,” he told the Business Post. “But what they [the EDPB] say is vague and conditional. So it’s likely to be illegal in most cases, but the language is very wishy-washy.”