EU to address misuse of personal data by political parties

The Financial Times reports that the EU is seeking the power to impose significant fines on European political parties who misuse voters’ personal data to influence elections, as Brussels moves to crack down on privacy breaches following the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The European Commission is drafting an amendment to existing party funding rules that would ban political groups from profiting from data collection of the sort alleged against Cambridge Analytica. The UK-based company that worked with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is accused of improperly mining the data of millions of Facebook users.

Although the plans are still being finalised, the sanctions are likely to amount to around 5 per cent of the annual budget of a political party. “It is meant to ensure that something like Cambridge Analytica can never happen in the EU,” said one official.