Survey on EU Data Protection on Behalf of the German Digital Association Bitkom
After five years, German companies do not give the European General Data Protection Regulation a good report card: The GDPR, which has been in force since May 2018, only receives a grade of "sufficient" (3.9). Although two thirds (65%) of companies have now fully or largely implemented the regulations, the challenges remain significant. The main complaint is that the GDPR makes business processes more complicated (78%) and is too impractical (77%). This was revealed by a representative survey commissioned by the digital association Bitkom among 503 companies with 20 or more employees in Germany. 56% experience that the GDPR delays the development of new products and services, and around half (48%) note that innovations from other regions cannot be used in the EU due to the GDPR. In all companies (100 percent), the GDPR has led to innovative projects failing or not even being started in the past twelve months. "Data protection must not be allowed to slow down digital innovation to this extent," says Susanne Dehmel, member of the Bitkom management board. At the same time, in the five-year review, companies also emphasize the advantages of data protection regulations: data security in the company has improved and the GDPR is setting standards worldwide (61% in each case), trust in digital processes has also been strengthened (51%) and the competitive conditions in the EU are now more uniform (45%). "Even after five years, there is unfortunately more shadow than light with the GDPR. The aim of creating a uniform data protection framework with high standards for Europe was and is correct. However, implementation and interpretation in practice mean that this goal has not yet been achieved. Companies are struggling with the ongoing task of data protection," says Dehmel.
