EU Data Privacy Watchdogs Urged to Sort Out ‘Public Squabbles’

European Union privacy regulators must sort out their “public squabbles” over the enforcement of the bloc’s data-protection rules or its executive body may consider moving to a more centralized model to target violations.

Tensions have been building for months among national data protection watchdogs over the amount of time their Irish colleagues are taking to complete probes on big U.S. tech companies, including Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc. Such tensions and public rows playing out in the media are “not a good development,” European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova told Bloomberg in an interview.

Vera Jourova

Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Jourova’s comments follow a spat ...