Don't mistake the journalist's writeup with the actual law, and perhaps think about restraining your knee-jerk 'EU is awful' and 'bureaucrats are clueless'. Privacy laws in the EU are much stricter than in the US, and a good thing too. I've been reading the same kind of comments about the Microsoft anti-trust decision, and when I looked into it I got a good appreciation for the thinking behind it. But it took some more effort than just jumping to conclusions about stupid officials in their ivory towers.