EU Working Party reiterated its claim to ICANN in a letter sent earlier this month. The data protection body highly recommends ICANN to amend the new RAA so that it would conform to the EU law. The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party includes data protection commissioners in all 28 EU member states.
The Working Party objects to the Data Retention Requirement in the 2013 RAA arises because the requirement is not compatible with Article 6(e) of the European Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC which states that personal data must be “kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the data were collected”. The Working Party told ICANN the same thing in July last year – but a week later ICANN VP Cyrus Namazi told ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee that the Working Party was “not a legal authority” as far as ICANN is concerned.
Any registrar may request an opt out of the RAA data retention clauses if they can present a legal opinion that ICANN considers "valid". ICANN has so far processed one waiver request made by the French registrar OVH. This legal opinion, notably is made by Blandine Poidevin of the French law firm Jurisexpert, citing the original Working Party letter heavily – so to some experts it seems like EU registrars have to pay a lawyer to have their requests taken seriously.
