Viviane Reding, vice president of the European Commission, wants to make it much simpler to negotiate such binding corporate rules (BCRs) under new data protection regulations she plans to present early next year. Such BCRs are not provided for in the current E.U. data protection directive, which dates back to 1995. Companies including GE and Bristol-Myers Squibb have already negotiated them on a piecemeal basis over the last decade for many of the countries where they operate.”]