Humanius

I wouldn’t call it odd. There is no such law in the Netherlands either, and I’ve seen cars parked “against the flow of traffic” in other countries I have been to as well.

Heck… I wouldn’t even have known that this was illegal in Germany if it weren’t for this post. Guess that might help save me a fine in future.

Have you read the article? They appear to be rolling back a previous weakening, so it is the exact opposite of breaking the GDPR.

In November they tried to classify pseudoanonymised data as not being considered personal information, even if it still contained information by which someone could be identified. This was following a court ruling in September that pseudoanonymised data could be considered personal information in certain situations.

This proposal would roll back that change from November

The courts ruled in September 2025 that pseudoanonymized data can still count as personal data, if it is not sufficiently anonymized, under the definition as it existed at the time. Since personal data comes with a whole bunch of requirements under the GDPR that meant that even if data is pseudoanonymized, it might not be sufficient to be free of GDPR restrictions

The revision from November 2025 aimed to say “no actually pseudoanonymized data is not personal data after all” even if it contained identifiable information. I could see that introducing a loophole where companies start claiming that they “sufficiently” pseudoanonymized their data, even though it’s still full of identifiable information.

Scrapping that revision just brings us back to the position we were in back in September, where pseudoanonymized data is not automatically anonymous. If the pseudoanonymized data contains identifiable information it is personal information, and thus comes with the additional requirements of the GDPR. (If I’m understanding this correctly)

Edit: Also worth noting that this follows a recommendation by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), that the definition of personal data “should say what personal data is, instead of what it is not”, in order to avoid legal uncertainty resulting from the revision in November.

Okay… From my understanding of the article, they are revising a previous definition of what is considered pseudoanonymized data. This defintion was introduced following a court ruling that pseudonymized data can be considered personal data under certain circumstances (Which I’m assuming means if that pseudoanonymized data still contains identifiable information)

They are removing a section which was added in last November, following the court ruling in September. This section claimed that pseudoanonymized data does not count as personal data, even if it contains “Information relating to a natural person” by which other people could identify the person.

So, if I’m understanding this correctly, this is rolling back a previous weakening to the GDPR.

The military wants the best equipment, and currently in terms of specs that is the F-35.

That comes with a dependence on the United States, which at the time of purchasing these jets was not considered to be a particular concern because America is a good ally and a part of NATO.

Following Trump’s re-election and antics over Greenland, that calculation is now different. It might not be worth it to buy new F-35s at this point (though Germany seems to be considering it still), but the Dutch army has pre-existing F-35s which we should be able to use even if America doesn’t want us to for whatever reason.

At this point for the purchase of new jets we really should be looking at the new Eurofighter though, imo