Every European country will have a privacy commissioner or agency to enforce the law. The EU will expect the countries with which it does business to do the same - and that includes the United States. The sting on the tail is contained in Article 25 of the directive. European countries will not be allowed to send personal information to countries that do not maintain adequate standards of privacy. Thus, a French company that wants to send credit card information to a data-processing company in China will not be able to do so.
China has no privacy law, and no interest in privacy.
The United States, likewise, has few guaranteed privacy protections for the private sector. As a result, the US may soon find itself unable to access personal data relating to almost half of the developed world. Unless a way forward is found in the next few months, a huge chunk of business between the world's two biggest economic blocs may hit the buffers. At stake is the future of banking, travel, credit card transactions, electronic commerce, and government business. In cyberspace, the European rules may create new headaches for Web sites that use cookies or profiling systems such as Aptex Software's SelectCast.