The EU Cloud Code of Conduct (CoC) has become the first GDPR code to get the go ahead from data protection authorities.

The members of the EU Cloud Code of Conduct General Assembly and SCOPE Europe announced that the CoC has received its official approval by the Belgian Data Protection Authority, following the positive opinion issued by the European Data Protection Board.

It is the first transnational CoC covering all cloud offerings to be approved.

The code aims to make it simple for cloud services users, particularly SMEs and public bodies, to determine whether a given cloud computing-based service is GDPR-compliant.

It also seeks to build trust in online services and raise the default level of data protection in the European cloud computing market.

“The approval of the EU Cloud CoC was achieved through narrow collaboration within the European Data Protection Board and is an important step towards a harmonised interpretation and application of the GDPR in a crucial sector for the digital economy,” said David Stevens, chairman of the Belgian Data Protection Authority. “I hope that this first experience in approving a transnational code of conduct will mark the beginning of the development of more transnational codes of conduct to foster compliance for companies, harmonisation for sectoral organizations and transparency for data subjects.”

Agnieszka Bruyère, vice-president, IBM Cloud, EMEA, said: “The major contribution of this Code of Conduct will be to make GDPR readiness easy to verify. This is great news for users and public entities across Europe, who will find it easier to assess the services on offer and capitalise on the possibilities offered by cloud computing.”

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