EU laws governing personal data to be tightened under sweeping reforms

Under a sweeping reform of laws governing the use of personal data, the EU plans to force companies to report privacy breaches to authorities or face stiff sanctions.

The new data protection law is expected to be agreed to by EU governments and members of the European Parliament today.

Under the new protection law, set to replace a patchwork of 28 different laws regulators would get greater enforcement powers.

Current laws, date back to the 1990s, hobbling  regulators.

According to lawyers and privacy activists, today's negotiations should make businesses more keen to protect data.

The new law is aimed at making doing business across the EU easier by subjecting companies to just one regulator, in whatever country they had their European headquarters.

The so-called one-stop system aimed to  prevent companies from having to deal with a different regulator in each country where they operated, which particularly impacts companies such as Google and Facebook.

The new laws would require US tech firms to inform users in Europe how their information was going to be used, failing which they would be liable to hefty fines.

Companies would need to clearly inform users what information about them was being collected and how it would be used, and get their consent to that use. This legislation has been several years in the making.

''A lot of the language in this regulation has been sharpened in response to US companies walking very close to the line as far as complying with EU data protection regulations,'' said Danny O'Brien, the international director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based cyber rights group, USA Today reported.

The new directive would also give EU resident the legal right to force companies to correct any information about them that was outdated or incorrect.

It also raised the age of data consent to 16 with younger users required to get parental permission to share information about themselves with companies, said O'Brien. The age of consent was 13 earlier.