The Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons regarding the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation) entered into force May 24th, 2016. Indeed, Article 99 paragraph 2 provides that “This Regulation shall enter into force on the twentieth day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union”.
This legislation took the form of a regulation, which has the effect of making it directly applicable throughout the European Union as soon as it enters into force under the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. In this context, Article 99 (2) of the GDPR states that “This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States”.
However, and in order that the EU Member States and the various economic actors can take account of the changes necessary for establishing compliance with this Regulation, it was decided to postpone the application of the Regulation until May 25th, 2018.