Amendment 225· Digital Omnibus proposal Recital 27a (new)

(27a)Trustworthy processing of data and legal clarity is necessary for economic growth and supporting innovation with socially beneficial outcomes. In order to achieve this, some clarifications are necessary particularly to enable wide use of anonymisation. Personal data which have undergone pseudonymisation, which could be attributed to a natural person by the use of additional information should be considered to be information on an identifiable natural person. However, personal data that cannot be directly or indirectly attributed to a natural person is not within the scope of Regulation (EU) 2016/679. Controllers should be allowed to process personal data for the sole purpose of anonymizing personal data. Such processing should typically be understood as a legitimate interest for a controller. At the same time, the protection of data subjects’ rights typically benefits from anonymization. Consequently, the balancing test should favour the processing of personal data for anonymization. To ascertain whether means are reasonably likely to be used to identify the natural person, account should be taken of all objective factors, such as the costs of and the amount of time required for identification, taking into consideration the available technology at the time of the processing and foreseeable technological developments.