Pursuant to their common decision 26 February 2013 to engage action in order to penalize Google Inc. for refusing to revise its global privacy policy, six of the European Working Party 29 regulators, led by the French CNIL, have now jointly started to act in their respective jurisdictions and according to their national laws against Google Inc.

The CNIL reported 02 April 2013 that, after having met (at their demand) with representatives of Google Inc. on 19 March, the six Data Protection Authorities (DPA) of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the UK have on the same day engaged action based on the conclusion that no substantive change needed to be acknowledged.

The CNIL announced that such action, which would typically comprise a preliminary inquiry and controls, would immediately start at the step of controls since the inquiry has been implemented over the past months and has led to substantive exchanges between the CNIL and Google Inc. (our blog has extensively reported on these exchanges).

The CNIL also announced that it would implement an international administrative cooperation procedure with the other European DPAs in that regard.

This joint action, which remarkably includes the UK Information Commissioner, evidences an undoubtedly strong show of European DPAs’ willingness to force international, and in particular U.S. companies, to comply with European Data Protection regulation on major European markets.

It is to be seen as the first “real life” cooperation test in the framework of what new European Data Protection Regulations are scheduled to set up, and therefore to be monitored very closely, which this blog will continue to do.