Over a third of Romanian companies are unaware of GDPR legislation, two months before implementation

Anca Alexe 15/03/2018 | 15:58

According to a study by MKOR, more than a third of Romanian companies (37 percent) do not yet know about the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) or believe that the regulation does not apply to them, even when there are only two months left before the GDPR takes effect.

GDPR will have to be applied and followed by a majority of Romanian companies. However, only 62 percent are aware that they will be affected by the new regulation. Of these, almost two thirds have updated or are currently updating their processes in order to comply with the legislation before May 25, the date when it will enter into force throughout the European Union.

Corina Cimpoca, Senior Consultant and founder at MKOR Consulting, said: “GDPR is knocking on companies’ doors, so any organisation that collects data about its clients and collaborators will have to comply with the requirements of the European regulation before May 25^th.”

Almost a third (31 percent) of companies have only been informed about GDPR, without taking any action. Another 13 percent have not even tried to learn about how they will be affected. Small businesses are the most unprepared: 20 percent of them have not done anything to comply with the new regulation, and 44 percent only got informed about it.

On the other hand, almost a quarter of the responding companies have identified the work processes which will be changed and have prepared a plan, and 19 percent have prepared an internal team dedicated to the implementation of GDPR.

18 percent of Romanian companies relied on specialised consulting services to align with GDPR – in general, these are large and mid-sized businesses, which have larger budgets available.

For most companies, the amounts spent for complying with GDPR were not larger than EUR 1,000, but 9 percent of responding companies paid between EUR 1,000-3,000 and 6 percent will spend over EUR 10,000.