March 23, 2020

Wojciech Wiewiórowski, the EDPS, says that with new legislation on data protection in the EU now in place, “our greatest challenge moving into 2020 and beyond is to ensure that this legislation produces the promised results”.

The Annual Report provides an insight into all EDPS activities in 2019, which was the last year of a five-year EDPS mandate. EDPS activities focused on consolidating the achievements of previous years, assessing the progress made, and starting to define priorities for the future.

The Report says that the EDPS spent much time and effort ensuring that the EU institutions were adequately equipped to implement the new data protection rules for EU institutions in Regulation (EU) 2018/1725. Over the course of 2019, this included conducting training sessions, issuing Guidelines and continuing to work closely with the Data Protection Officers (DPOs) of the EU institutions. The EDPS also stepped up enforcement activities, launching several investigations into the processing of personal data by EU institutions.

The EDPS also continued to work closely with the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) on initiatives aimed at ensuring the consistent application of the GDPR across the EU. This included working with the EDPB to produce the first joint EDPS and EDPB Opinion and jointly issuing advice to the European Parliament.

In addition, a significant focus of EDPS work in 2019 was on developing and sharing technological expertise. Among other initiatives, the EDPS launched TechDispatch, a regular online publication providing information on new technologies and their data protection impact. The institution also developed and shared the Website Evidence Collector (WEC), a tool that can be used to determine websites’ compliance with data protection rules. To read the EDPS press release in full and for a link to the Annual Report 2019, click here.