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Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, would like to see a global GDPR in the near future. That’s what Microsoft’s highest boss told us during a conversation with journalists at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Nadella believes that GDPR is a fantastic start to treating privacy as a human right.

In the interviews, Nadella stated that he would like other countries to go down the road of the European Union when it comes to privacy. Last May, the EU introduced the General Data Protection Regulation, the world’s most far-reaching privacy directive. Thanks to GDPR, consumers have full control over their data. Companies that do not comply can expect huge fines of up to four percent of their worldwide annual turnover.

Global scheme

As far as Nadella is concerned, the United States should come up with a similar privacy arrangement. But as soon as it is there, other countries should follow, preferably China and then the rest of the world. I hope that we will eventually arrive at a common standard worldwide. One of the things we don’t want to do is fragment the world and increase transaction costs. After all, you can see that in our financial figures, as Nadella said during the interviews. I hope that we will all come together, the United States and Europe first, and then China. All three of these regions must come together and establish a global standard.

The question is whether such a thing will work. In China and the United States, privacy is viewed much differently than in the European Union. In fact, China has recently introduced rules that are more restrictive of privacy. There is, for example, an increasingly government-controlled system whereby citizens are judged on their behaviour and rewarded or punished for good or bad behaviour.

In the meantime, the GDPR has had a major impact on companies. For example, Google recently received a fine of EUR 50 million from the French privacy watchdog for two GDPR infringements.

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.