March 2026 – Two parallel
developments suggest that Europe is drawing clearer boundaries
around both AI ownership and data protection. One comes from the
Council and the other from a German court, and both signal a more
cautious approach toward redefining legal fundamentals in the name
of innovation or administrative simplification.
1. Digital omnibus leak: Member States cut the core of the
proposed GDPR reform
A leaked Council compromise draft removes entirely the proposed
redefinition of “personal data” under the GDPR, and
that alone underscores how controversial the Digital Omnibus has
become.
What happened?
In November 2025, the European Commission launched the Digital
Omnibus, with one of its central ambitions being to recalibrate how
pseudonymised date is treated under the GDPR. The Commission
proposed introducing what, in essence, is a principle of
relativity. In practical terms: if an entity cannot reasonably
identify the person behind certain
