The Proposal (“Proposal for a Regulation on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data“) is a Regulation, not a Directive: while Directives require national authorities to draw up legislation in order to conform with the directive, Regulations are applied in full without the need for national legislation.
Such a unified data protection Regulation aims to harmonise and enforce (introducing stronger enforcement rights and principles) in a single law different laws and implementation that have led to different data protection levels across the European Union.
N.B.: the Regulation will be applied in every EU Member State after two years of transition period in order to allow everybody to adapt to the new rules.