Autumn has always been my favourite season, and I am enjoying it especially this year. For a number of reasons, including the fact that I get to witness the rise of privacy in European political debates as well as some gaffes it brings into the picture, but that’s part of the fun. It’s sort of like looking at the “worst dressed” the day after the Oscars.

Autumn actually started off with a political gaffe, as the European Parliament held hearings with Commissioner-Designate for the Digital Economy and Society Günther Oettingher. All was going well, until Oettingher made a reference to the recent celebrities nude pictures hack. Oettingher didn’t seem to have grasped the fact that the pictures had been stolen and basically said that the celebrities had no one to blame but themselves: Whoever “is stupid enough to put a naked photo of themselves on the Internet cannot expect us to protect them.” Ouch.

Live from the hearing, MEP Jan Philip Albrecht—who accused Oettingher of being “a man of classical media” and of having no previous experience in digital matters—tweeted, “That hurts: @GOettingerEU doesn't know that those celebrities didn't publish their pics but stored them in a cloud service.”

It went better for Vice President-Designate Andrus Ansip, responsible for the Digital Single Market, who had his hearing this week. Stressing the importance of building a single market ready for the digital era, Ansip said he would work closely with Commissioner-Designate for Justice Věra Jourová and the council to conclude negotiations on the data protection package within the next six months.

Ansip said privacy negotiations with the U.S. must continue at the same time, and warned that the suspension of Safe Harbor might still be an option. “The agreement has yet to live up to its name,” he said.