The Israeli Ministry of Justice is proposing new obligations and definitions in newly proposed privacy regulations. The obligations will impact the owners of databases with personal data transferred from the European Economic Area. The new obligations include an obligation to delete information, an obligation to limit data retention periods, and data accuracy obligations.

The newly proposed regulations were prompted by the EU Commission’s ongoing re-examination of Israel’s EU adequacy status granted in 2011. The key prerequisite for a finding of adequacy is that the level of data protection in Israel be essentially equivalent to the level of data protection in the European Economic Area, mainly as per the GDPR. The EU adequacy recognition is of great importance to Israel, both economically and politically.

Privacy experts severely criticized the draft regulations as early as July, explaining that favoring individuals from the EU over Israelis is discriminatory and outrageous. The experts indicated that the enhanced rights should apply to all data subjects, regardless of their location.

Click here to read the full draft (In Hebrew).

Click here to read the experts’ letter from July 2022 (In Hebrew).