Euro data watchdog claims progress on data protection

The European Union is making good progress on data protection, with most institutions now meeting requirements - although Community agencies are doing less well.

This news comes from the second European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) report into compliance.

Peter Hustinx, supervisor at EDPS, said: "I am pleased to see that compliance with data protection rules is developing in Community institutions and agencies. Further progress is however needed to fully translate those legal obligations in concrete technical and organisational arrangements that enable privacy safeguards to be ensured."

The watchdog said it is satisfied that all but one institution has a decent inventory of what data processing they do. There has been an increase in notification of such processing to the data protection officer - by the end of 2008 six institutions could claim to have notified DPOs of all processing, compared to only two at the start of the year.

Although only two institutions managed to warn the EDPS of risky processing, the watchdog expects all institutions will have this in place by the end of 2009.

The watchdog also said that although very few people have requested data under the rules, agencies are already setting up processes to monitor this.

The press statement is here. ®