On August 30, 2023, the Parliament of Jordan announced that the House of Representatives approved, on the same day, the draft law on personal data protection for the year 2022, as amended by the Jordanian House of Senate. In particular, the Parliament noted that the amendments approved by the House of Representatives, as returned from the Senate, allow entities subject to the supervision of the Central Bank to process personal data, including the transfer and exchange of data within or outside Jordan, without informing the natural person whose data is being processed, which is considered 'legal and legitimate.' Additionally, entities processing data for the purpose for which it was collected are exempt from the required licenses and permits, provided they do not publish or disclose the data to third parties. In this context, 'processing' refers to the activities of collecting, recording, copying, storing, organizing, revising, exploiting, using, transmitting, distributing, transferring, displaying, concealing identity, encoding, destroying, restricting, erasing, modifying, describing, or disclosing data by any means.

Moreover, the Parliament noted that the Senate also introduced a clause requiring the issuance of a specialized system to regulate data processing and removed 'access to data' from the definition of processing in the draft law. The authority to appoint four experienced and specialized individuals to the membership of the Personal Data Protection Council, established by the law, lies with the Council of Ministers, not the Minister of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship.

OneTrust DataGuidance confirmed with Mariana Abudayah, Associate at Nsair & Partners - Lawyers, that "[…] the Bill was later presented before the Jordanian House of Senate for its final approval, prior to presenting it before His Majesty King Abdullah II for his royal assent."

Mariana continued, "The House of Senate has offered some amendments to the Bill before it is presented to the Jordanian House of Representatives for a second time. The House of Senate has amended the definition of 'process' by removing the term 'accessing data' from the latter definition. Since the Bill has been approved by the House of Senate, it will be represented before His Majesty King Abdullah II for his royal assent. Upon approval of his Majesty, the bill will become effective six months after its publication in the Official Gazette."

You can read the press release, only available in Arabic, here.