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EurActiv (10 November 2020)

By Samuel Stolton 

Negotiators from the European Council and the Parliament have signed off on new export rules that restrict the sale of cyber-surveillance goods to worldwide regimes engaging in the repression of human rights.

However, the text of the regulation on so-called dual-use goods, brokered on Monday evening (9 November), leaves it up to member states to decide whether the new restrictions could include the export of products such as facial recognition technologies, which are currently being employed in the curtailment of human rights in certain totalitarian countries.

On Monday, Parliament and Council negotiators agreed that cyber-surveillance goods that allow for the “covert surveillance of natural persons by monitoring, extracting, collecting or analyzing data, including biometrics data” should fall under new export restrictions.

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