The European Union needs to work towards creating a regional communication network that circumvents the United States, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday. As a part of her weekly podcast, Merkel said she will talk to French President Francois Hollande during an upcoming visit to Paris about building a European communication network so that citizens' emails and other data does not pass through US servers. The EU is currently working towards setting out a collective framework for data protection, an initiative that is proving difficult due to the widely diverging privacy standards in its 28 member states. "Many countries have lower levels of data protection than Germany, and we do not want our privacy laws to be watered down," said Merkel, adding that companies like Google and Facebook would base their operations in countries with the lowest safeguards. "This is not tenable for Europe," she added. -- SPA 19:09 LOCAL TIME 16:09 GMT تغريد
