The United Arab Emirates joins Saudi Arabia by passing Federal Decree-Law No (45) of 2021 Regarding the Protection of Personal Data (“PPD Law”) to bring comprehensive data protection legislation to another country in the MENA region. Notably the PPD broadly mirrors the GDPR legislation.

The PPD Law will not take immediate effect and will be supplemented by the issuance of a set of Executive Regulations (issued by the Emirates Data Office- which will oversee the PPD Law) which we anticipate will be published in March 2022. Under the provisions of the PPD Law, organizations will have a further six months from the date on which the Executive Regulations are passed in order to comply with the same. This provides a window of around ten months from the date of this alert for businesses to ensure that they are fully compliant. As those familiar with the rollout of the GDPR will recall, whilst 10 months may seem ample time to attend to the issues that we note below, these processes always take longer than anticipated and we strongly recommend that all businesses that are subject to the PPD Law take immediate action along the lines noted in this alert.

Consequently, please continue reading to find recommendations for preparing for and implementing the PPD Law and an overview of the PPD Law itself.

What Should be Done Now?

Before diving into the details of the PPD, this section briefly covers steps to take now to begin preparing for the implementation of the PPD.

1. As with other...

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