When ranking more than 1,100 amendments¹, it is hard to turn the impact in an objective number. We have done our best to have a methodology that is as simple and neutral as possible.

Grading Approach

The scope was limited to GDPR and ePrivacy Articles (Articles 3 and 5) and related Recitals of the proposal for a Digital Omnibus (COM(2025) 837 final). Changes to some horizontal Recitals or Articles were included, if they had a clear link to the GDPR.

By default amendments were ranked without knowing the MEP or political affiliation. This can mean that e.g. moving an element was counted as two separate amendments (e.g. a negative deletion and a positive addition) as reviewers did not know that the same MEP made these two changes. In certain cases, when a larger context was needed, the MEP was identified to see how amendments relate to each other. Amendments were ranked by an expert GDPR lawyer. The results were cross-checked by a second person.

As many amendments were authored by several MEPs, the scores for these amendments are applied to all authors individually.

1) Privacy Ranking

The privacy ranking counted all amendments with improvements for privacy protections (which counted +1 on the Privacy Score) and all amendments with limitations of the right to privacy (which counted -1 on the Privacy Score). The size of the impact of the amendment was not considered in the grading. Amendments that were not clearly pointing in one or the other direction or where the impact was unclear, were counted as neutral (Privacy Score 0).

The benchmark was the current wording of the GDPR or ePrivacy Directive, given that the official aim of the proposal for a Digital Omnibus was to maintain the current level of protections. Only when the Commission proposal was adding new elements (e.g. Article 88b on privacy signals or Article 88a(4) on dark patterns) the “higher” standard was used as a benchmark.

The overall Privacy Ranking is ordered by the sum of an MEP’s amendment’s Privacy Scores(number of positive amendments minus number of negative Amendments.

While the approach of counting amendments is highly objective, the obvious weakness of this approach is, that an amendment can contain tiny or huge changes. MEPs can also partially change an Article via multiple amendments (per paragraph) or as an entire Article. This can lead to different counts. However, we do not believe that in an overall assessment these factors distorted the results in any significant way.

(2) Pushback Ranking

In the current political reality, replacing problematic proposals by the European Commission with the current text of the GDPR, or simply deleting the change suggested by the Commission is a strong signal in favor of the current standards. However, given the methodology in the privacy ranking, MEPs engaging in such “pushbacks” would largely be ranked “neutral” because they would merely reinstate the current level of protection. Clear “pushbacks” were therefore highlighted and MEPs were ranked according to the most pushbacks.

This ranking is naturally more subjective, as there was no clear threshold if a change constituted a “pushback”. However, our overall impression of the respective MEP’s approach coincides with the results of this ranking.

(3) Charter Violations

The GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive are not isolated laws, but implement Article 7 and 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Especially Article 8(2) of the Charter includes very specific requirements (e.g. purpose limitation or the right to access). We also highlighted amendments that would likely violate these elements of the Charter.

(4) Simplification & Privacy Ranking

The officially communicated aim of the proposed Digital Omnibus is to maintain the current level of protection, and at the same time achieve simplification. We have hence also graded if an amendment simplifies the law in comparison to the GDPR and the Commission proposal. While simplification mainly concerns businesses, in some cases changes can also shift burdens from users to businesses or between different groups of businesses . We hence looked at likely overall simplification, taking into account the overall business community, users, authorities and courts. When an Amendment is good or neutral on privacy, but good on simplification it was counted as good on both aims (+1). If the amendment is decreasing privacy protection, while also making the law more complex, it got a negative grade (-1).

The overall score was calculated like this:

• Simplification (+1), while increasing (+1) or maintaining (0) privacy protection was an overall +1
• Decreases in simplification (-1) and/or in privacy protections (-1) were counted as -1 given that the official aim was not reached
• Other combinations (e.g. increase in privacy without simplification or neutral on simplification) were counted as 0

The rating of all the amendments lead to the overall score.

Errors?

With more than 1,100 Amendments errors or misunderstandings can always occur. You can click on each Amendment and report an error. We will then reassess the grading as quickly as possible.