Recruitment of temporary agents - OLAF
Opinion of 14 November 2007 on a notification for prior checking regarding OLAF's selection and recruitment of its temporary agents (Case 2007-6)
Some of the procedures that EU institutions put in place pose risks to the data protection rights and freedoms of individuals.
Under the old legal framework (Regulation (EC) 45/2001), EU institutions were obliged to notify us before putting in place risky data processing operations.
In general, our prior checking Opinions were public.
Regulation 2018/1725 builds on the old Regulation and mirrors the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR) that applies to most organisations processing personal data in the Member States. Compared to the previous rules, Regulation 2018/1725 aligns documentation obligations more closely to the risks caused by processing personal data. This means for example that the documentation requirements for a EUI’s newsletter subscription will be lower than for a system using ‘intelligent CCTV’ covering publicly accessible space or a database profiling travellers for screening purposes.
Depending on the process at hand, EU institutions processing personal data ('controllers') may not have to go through all the steps below (these steps are described in the Accountability on the ground toolkit):
• Generate basic documentation (called ‘records’) for all processes;
• Check if the process is likely to result in high risks to the people whose data are processed and consult the DPO if it appears to do so;
• If the EU institution needs to do a data protection impact assessment (DPIA), they analyse those risks in more detail and develop specific safeguards/controls to manage them;
• If the results of the DPIA still indicate high residual data protection risks, the EU institution has to file a prior consultation with the EDPS (see Articles 40 and 90 of Regulation 2018/1725 respectively for administrative and operational personal data).
Article 39 of Regulation 2016/794 on Europol provides for an ad hoc prior consultation mechanism for new type of processing of operational data, namely data processed by Europol to support the Member States in preventing and combating serious crime and terrorism. Similarly, Article 72 of Regulation 2017/1939 on the European Public Prosecutor Office (EPPO) provides a specific prior consultation mechanism for the processing of operational data, namely data processed in the context of criminal investigations and prosecutions undertaken by the EPPO. Regulation 2018/1725, including the standard prior consultation mechanism, applies to Europol's and EPPO's processing of administrative data, which includes data on staff and visitors, for example.
Where an EU institution is unsure whether to notify us a data processing operation for prior consultation, their DPO can consult us for advice to confirm.
As for the old prior checking Opinions, in general the prior consultation Opinions are public, but we may delete sensitive elements where necessary, related to security for example. Some opinions, which are by nature sensitive, in particular in the police and justice area, may not be published. For the sake of transparency, these Opinions are summarised in our Annual Report.
Opinion of 14 November 2007 on a notification for prior checking regarding OLAF's selection and recruitment of its temporary agents (Case 2007-6)
Opinion of 12 Novembre 2007 on a notification for prior checking on the evaluation of the members of the linguistic team (Case 2007-475)
The EDPS has issued an opinion on the evaluation of the members of the linguistic team. The EDPS concludes that on a general basis the procedure complies with the principles established in the data protection regulation. However the EDPS did make some recommendations mainly as concerns the information of the persons concerned and the security measures. In particular, the EDPS suggested that the controller must inform the evaluated staff and provide them with the Data Protection Statement at the time of undertaking the evaluation procedure. Concerning the security measures, the EDPS recommended implementing measures to ensure an appropriate level of security in case of transfer of data.
Opinion of 8 November 2007 on a notification for prior checking on processing of personal data by the social services (Case 2007-302)
The EDPS opinion concluded that the processing proposed does not seem to involve any infringement of Regulation (EC) No 45/2001, as long certain recommendations are taken into account and notably that the Court of Auditors assesses the period of conservation of short term assistance; that the Court of Auditors ensures, in compliance with Article 4(1)(e) that the data stored in Excel tables for statistical and record-keeping purposes are kept in an anonymous form or with the identity of the data subject encrypted; and that further information must be provided to data subjects in accordance with Articles 11 and 12.
Opinion of 26 October 2007 on a notification for prior checking regarding national expert's expression of interest (Case 2007-423)
Avis du 24 octobre 2007 sur la notification d'un contrôle préalable à propos du dossier "Procédure de sélection des stagiaires par le Bureau du Médiateur européen" (Dossier 2004-267)