In a judgment that few saw coming – and which many are now saying will have global repercussions for months to come – the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled that public so-called 'beneficial owner registries, containing the details of those who own companies, financial accounts and other assets, are in breach of these owners' fundamental rights.

(..as FATCA critics respond with calls for immediate EU action)                                                                          

A new report by a European Parliamentary think tank that had been commissioned by the Parliament's Committee on Petitions (PETI) to "update" a previous report on the subject of "FATCA Legislation and its Application at the International and EU Level" is being welcomed by FATCA critics in Europe for its acknowledgement of certain  concerns about the way the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act is implemented that the original report didn't fully identify.

Campaigners against the way the U.S. tax evasion-prevention law known as FATCA is being enforced throughout Europe have begun writing to EU officials – and making this  correspondence public – to ask why it's taking so long for the EU to respond to questions formally raised more than a year ago over FATCA's compatibility with EU data protection regulations.

In what's being seen as a potentially significant development, the Steering Committee of the Democrats Abroad's Taxation Task Force has announced that it has "voted in support of submitting a resolution to 'update' the Democrats Abroad FATCA policy from 'reform' to 'repeal'."

Twelve years after President Obama signed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act into law – buried inside a domestic jobs bill known as the HIRE Act  – legal and political challenges targeting certain of its key provisions are continuing to progress, albeit slowly, in various "hot spots" around the world.

And yet, one more year on, and Washington lawmakers have still done nothing to mitigate the difficulties that U.S. expats struggle with, as a result of FATCA, in spite of these expats' increasingly-exasperated calls, as well as yet more calls for change on the part of the U.S. from growing numbers of foreign government officials, especially in Europe.   

European Commissioner for the Economy Paolo Gentiloni has again drawn fierce criticism from Americans and accidental Americans in Europe, with his remarks on the the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) – this time for saying that the European Commission is technically unable to directly address problems with "the monitoring and enforcement of EU data protection rules" that he acknowledges FATCA is causing. 

In a gesture no doubt aimed at least in part at the estimated 7 million to 9 million Americans who live outside of the U.S., today's BBC World Service's Weekend show set aside a 15-minute segment to examine some of the tax and citizenship issues these expats are currently struggling with.

Time magazine, one of the longest-established and best-known weekly magazines in the U.S., has become the latest mainstream media outlet to run a major article about America's so-called "accidental Americans," and their struggles to maintain bank accounts in the countries in which they live and are citizens of, as a result of the controversial U.S. law known as FATCA. 

Mishcon de Reya, the London-based law firm that has been a hard-to-miss presence in European data protection matters over the past year, on Tuesday said it had filed "a lengthy GDPR complaint in two languages (English and French) with the Luxembourg National Data Protection Commission," as it sought to "bring together the concerns raised by the European data protection community and relevant European judgements."

 Luxembourg's courts are "understood" to have asked the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) a number of questions relating to the validity of public registers of beneficial ownership, according to the latest statement on the subject of personal data security concerns issued by the London-based Mishcon de Reya law firm.