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As part of the program called the Digital Agenda for Europe announced in 2010, the EU is working to build a digital single market. The main aim is to remove barriers to electronic commerce and all types of electronic transactions between the different European states, therefore creating a common space, free and safe for online interactions between citizens, companies and states in the European Union.

To achieve this goal, a series of laws have been drafted aimed at breaking down digital barriers and establishing the necessary legal bases for electronic transactions in a secure and reliable way.

One of these laws, specifically the Regulation (EU) Nº 910/2014 (eIDAS) on electronic identification and electronic trust services for electronic transactions, defines what are the trust service providers (sometimes called electronic trust services providers).

In this post we explain who these providers are and what they do.

This post is also available in Spanish.

On May 25th, 2018 the new European Regulation on Data Protection - Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and Council - will be fully applied in all EU member countries, and therefore, in Spain.

In this country, work is being done on the draft law, which will amend the Law currently in force - the Organic Law 15/1999, of December 13 on Data Protection. However, no information has been provided to date.

What we do know is that the Spanish Agency for the Protection of Data (AEPD), in collaboration with other agencies and institutions, is carrying out some actions to enhance the regulatory compliance of the Regulation, and is also developing some guidelines for understanding some aspects of said regulation.

In this post we summarize the actions that we consider the most relevant.

This post is also available in Spanish.

Last week we participated in a workshop titled "Towards Principles and Guidance on eID interoperability for Online Platforms” organized by the EU Commission in the context of the Communication on Online Platforms and the Digital Single Market. The goal of the event was to gather feedback and share some best practices in order to further develop the principles and guidance on eID interoperability that has to be published by the end of 2017.

In this post we summarize the insights of that workshop.

This post is also available in Spanish.

The Internet and the consequent emergence of new technologies has led to the emergence of new forms of crimes and breaches of norms that we couldn’t have expected only a decade ago. Therefore, it has been necessary to adapt the different laws that exist, in order to regulate and protect citizens and companies from all these cyber attacks as much as possible. New rules and protocols to regulate those new situations, not foreseen until now in the offline world, have also been established.

In this guest post from Vanesa Alarcón, IT Lawyer and Founding Partner of Avatic Abogados, we will talk about the Spanish and European laws that are putting order in cyberspace, trying to put a stop to the new generations of cybercriminals.

This post is also available in Spanish.

In recent years, two opposing phenomena have occurred simultaneously - on one hand, the unstoppable progress of the digital economy has caused deep disruptions in how certain sectors function and has led to the rise of new business models. On the other, the economic crisis that began with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008 interrupted the global trend towards deregulation in certain sectors, specifically in the financial and insurance sector, a situation that led to new and complex regulation standards.

The coincidence of the timing of this global economic crisis, along with the greater regulatory demands applied to banks and insurance companies, has caused the emergence of new technology companies under the new subsector of fintech: the RegTech.

In this post we will explain what RegTech is, what are its fields of application and how the future is presented for those companies that operate in this subsector that also uses technology to eliminate inefficiencies and facilitate legal and regulatory compliance in the digital era.

This post is also available in Spanish.