Publish time: Wed May 04 10:43:04 CST 2016
On January 19 2016, the 7th In-house Counsel Forum entitled “EU’s Latest Legislation on Data Protection and MNC practice of data compliance” (the “Forum”) was co-hosted by the Beijing Arbitration Commission / the Beijing International Arbitration Center (the “BAC”) and the China Enterprise Legal Risk Management Institute at the conference hall of the BAC. The event attracted counsels from some 20 large enterprises such as PICC, Air China, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Reinsurance, Alibaba, Tensent, Youku, Intel, PWC, Jiang Tai Insurance Brokers, BAIC, Genilex and ASPire, as well as representatives of the Credit Reference Center of the People’s Bank of China, the China Academy of Telecommunication Research and the Insurance Association of China. The guest speakers of this event were Mr. Alex Brown, Partner of Simmons & Simmons and well-known expert on data protection, and his colleague Mr. Wang Dequan, Chief Representative of Simmons & Simmons in Beijing, who jointly provided an introduction of the origin, development, legislation and practice of data protection, and an extensive and systematic analysis of the significant influence of the EU’s latest legislation on MNC practice of data protection.
The Forum
Mr. Ye Xiaozhong, Director of the China Enterprise Legal Risk Management Institute, delivered a welcome speech on behalf of the hosts, and extended warm thanks to Mr. Alex Brown and Mr. Wang Dequan for their arrival and the audience for their active participation.
Mr. Ye Xiaozhong
After years of development, becoming internationalization has already been the first target of nowadays Chinese enterprises. Following the “Go Abroad” strategy proposed last year by the Chinese government, a new upsurge of Chinese enterprises’ overseas investment has been set off. Meanwhile, going abroad may also be a road of thistles and thorns that leads to risks and challenges. Today, with the high-speed development of internet and the redundancy of information, Chinese enterprises should be fully aware of the issue of their data protection.
Against such a background, Mr. Wang Dequan started his speech with the “Google case”, and pointed out the necessity of enterprises or institutions’ protection of private data and information left by their users.
Mr. Alex Brown then made a detailed introduction of the EU’s data protection system from perspective of its origin, development, scope and subjects of application. He specifically interpreted the eight principles of the EU’s data protection system, emphasizing on the importance of fair and legitimate data processing, full, relative and not-excessive use of data, and ensuring data security. He also stressed that the transfer of data to countries outside Europe would have significant influence on enterprises’ operation and management.
Mr. Alex Brown
Mr. Wang Dequan
Thereafter, Mr. Wang Dequan shared the process and enforcement of data protection. The two speakers’ interpretation of the EU’s latest legislation on data protection and detailed introduction of the application thereof were welcomed by audience, who then had a positive interaction with them in respect to practice of MNC data protection compliance.
It is generally known that laws and regulations in different jurisdictions may be in conflict, and this is one of the hot topics the audience paid attention to. The EU has previously provided special treatment of Safe Harbor to American enterprises, which was determined to be invalid by the EU court in 2015. In practice, Chinese domestic enterprises may also meet such dilemmas that result from conflict of laws and regulations of the EU, America and China on data protection requirements. Questions were therefore raised in such respects. The two speakers well answered such questions based on their rich practice experience and solid expertise knowledge, which made the Q&A section more than satisfactory. At last, the Forum was rounded off perfectly with the warm applause by the audience.
The In-house Counsel Forum was a series of events on legal practice jointly organized by the BAC and the China Enterprise Legal Risk Management Institute, aiming at the promotion of experience sharing among in-house counsels and the improvement of their capability of dispute resolution design and dispute risks management, and by way of research and colloquia on issues in corporate legal risk management practice, the series events have attracted continuous attention from the community of in-house counsels ever since the launch thereof in 2012. We welcome more colleagues within the legal community and anyone interested in diversified dispute resolution to continue to pay attention to, and participate in, the BAC’s seminars and colloquia.