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Parliamentary question - E-000283/2020(ASW)Parliamentary question
E-000283/2020(ASW)

Answer given by Ms Kyriakides on behalf of the European Commission

In 2016, it was estimated[1] that the combined share of expenditures on medicinal products and medical devices in 2012 comprised some 25% of total expenditures on healthcare in the EU. According to Eurostat, the total value of healthcare expenditure in the EU28 was about EUR 1 481 billion in 2016[2], which equals to about 10% of gross domestic product in the EU for the same year.

For the EU, the protection of personal data is of paramount importance and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)[3] requires companies processing personal data to respect data protection principles, such as data minimisation, integrity and confidentiality, and to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to integrate these principles into the processing.

The ePrivacy Directive[4] allows storing of or access to information in a user’s terminal equipment only with the informed consent of that user or if strictly necessary for the transmission of a communication or the provision of an information society service explicitly requested by that user. The monitoring and enforcement of the application of privacy and data protection rules falls primarily under the competence of data protection authorities and courts.

The Google/Fitbit transaction has not been formally notified to the Commission. It is always up to the companies to notify transactions with an EU dimension to the Commission. Should the transaction be subject to the Commission’s merger control review, it will be carefully assessed under the applicable rules set out in the EU Merger Regulation[5].

Last updated: 26 May 2020
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