Crèches and childcare facilities - Commission

Opinion of 27 July 2007 on a notification for prior checking on the "Management of crèches and childcare facilities" (Case 2007-148)

This dossier deals with the management of "crèches and after-school childcare services in Brussels", undertaken by the Commission's Crèche and Childcare Service. The persons concerned are the children of the staff of the European institutions, those children's parents and persons authorised to collect and drop off children.

Processing is the subject of a prior check since, as part of assessing and selecting children to be admitted to crèches and childcare services based on the criteria set out in internal regulations, the collection of health and administrative data constitutes information on the state of health of the person concerned and their personality.

One recommendation by the EDPS is that if, in future, a waiting list is drawn up for the childcare services, the Commission should guarantee that the medical record is collected only after the child has been admitted to the outdoor or after-school childcare facilities. A further recommendation is that, instead of inquiring about civil status, the Commission should ask whether the family is a one or two-parent family (one or both parents has/have responsibility for the child) or should, at least, inform the parents that data collection on their marital status is not relevant/necessary for the purpose of data processing. It was stressed that the Commission should guarantee protection of the rights of the persons concerned in this kind of processing by means of a clause to be added to the service contract concluded with the company which runs the two private crèches. The EDPS has also recommended that the contract concluded with the childcare company explicitly include provisions on the roles of the controller and the sub-contractor respectively and include provisions on the requirements governing the confidentiality and security of the processing.