BRUSSELS—European officials have been forced to defend their new privacy laws, which are being earmarked for export to the United States, after they were blamed for a German town canceling its popular children’s Christmas tradition. The local authority in Roth, near Nuremberg, temporarily called off an annual event in which youngsters hang hand-written notes with their wish lists to Santa on the town center’s Christmas tree.
It said the ceremony had to be canceled because it ran afoul of the European Union’s new data protection law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force in May.
