The Dutch Data Protection Authority – Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens will receive half a million euros extra budget in the coming years. This should be used specifically to monitor cookies and online tracking, says State Secretary Alexandra van Huffelen of Digitalization.
Dutch Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP) will receive half a million euros extra budget for monitoring usage of tracking cookies
The State Secretary writes in a letter to the House of Representatives that she will allocate the amount to the Dutch Data Protection Authority from next year. This amounts to 500,000 euros per year for 2024, 2025 and 2026. The budget comes from the Ministry of the Interior and was partly agreed by Minister Franc Weerwind for Legal Protection.
The budget is in addition to the extra budget that the privacy regulator was promised on Budget Day. However, the AP must spend the money on ‘additional surveillance on the usage of cookie consent and online tracking’. The AP already monitors this, especially based on the GDPR, but the Dutch government has long believed that the independent supervisory authority should pay more attention to this.
The extra budget applies until 2027. From that year onwards, the AP will receive a structural budget of 350,000 euros, intended for ‘publishing guidance and developing tools to make investigations easier’. The AP will collaborate more with other supervisors, such as the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets.
It is the second time since the Rutte IV cabinet took office that money has been made available for an explicit task for the AP, which as an independent administrative body should decide for itself where the priorities lie. The government previously released millions for a department that will supervise algorithms. The algorithm supervisor, which will also become a European obligation in the future, started in January.
