France Adopts A New Data Protection Act

Law n°2018-493 of June 20, 2018 on the protection of personal data was promulgated on June 20, 2018 and published in the Official Journal on June 21, 2018.

The purpose of this new Law is to adapt Law n° 78-17 of January 6, 1978 on information technology, data files and liberties (commonly and hereinafter referred to as the 'French Data Projection Act") to UE law following the General Data Protection Regulation that entered into force on May 25, 2018 (hereinafter the "GDPR")¹ (a Regulation is binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all EU Member States) and Directive  2016/680 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by competent authorities for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties (a Directive is binding on Member States as to the result to be achieved but leaves them the choice of the form and method) that ought to be