3.3 Interviews

2015 this would represent a total ‘cost’ of 234 million days. In 2015 Eurostat reported that average daily labour costs (for an 8-hour day) were €20037. The monetary cost of 234 million days would therefore equate to €46.8 billion per annum.

Clearly there will be many businesses that simply are not aware of regulations or believe they do not apply to their business. But even if the above calculation is incorrect by a magnitude of 100 compliance would still be costing EU28 Member State businesses €468 million per annum. It must be acknowledged that businesses have many administrative compliance obligations (e.g. VAT, social contributions, company taxes etc.). Nonetheless, if regulations were eliminated or more easily communicated and understood the time spent by business on compliance could be considerably reduced.

Tips and recommendations from respondents Participants were asked for recommendations to overcome any problems they had experienced or they could foresee in Europe. Solutions and or tips were suggested by just over a quarter of respondents from private sector organisations of different sizes in different industry sectors and different locations across Europe. These included better harmonisation of data regulations throughout EU28 Member States so that businesses, particularly those operating in more than one country, would have a common set of regulations to comply with, rather than having to search through data regulations in each Member State in which they operate.

Encryption of data, use of cloud servers in less regulated environments and virtualisation of servers were seen as potential solutions to problems concerning cloud storage location. Encryption was thought to be useful in more securely holding personal data. Virtualisation of servers was thought to be solution when scaling IT infrastructure.

Throughout the study with various stakeholders and online respondents our study team was often told that regulations about data flow are at best unclear, and on occasions contradictory. One respondent believes that not many organisations in their country have thought through regulatory issues, this was thought to be particularly true for smaller organisations. Definitive sources of information, providing centralised, succinct and easy to comprehend information about cross border data flow regulations are rarely available and many are confused by what they can and cannot do with data. One large cloud service provider interviewed for the study stated that they were appointing regulatory experts in each country so that they could better understand their obligations. They were also considering providing ‘how to’ guides for their users. These types of user’s guides could provide greater clarity in EU Member States for organisations about regulations related to data holdings and transferring data across borders.

3.3 Interviews

In addition to the survey, the study team conducted a series of 20 interviews with relevant stakeholders across Europe, to collect further relevant data on data location restrictions and their practical application, thus improving the robustness of collected data. This section provides a description of the methodological approach that we followed for carrying out in-depth interviews with stakeholders, and an overview of the results.

37 Eurostat Hourly labour cost briefing http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Hourly_labour_costs