This Report, which covers 2008 as the fourth full year of activity of the EDPS, concludes the first EDPS mandate and provides an opportunity to take stock of developments since the start.
The report shows that significant progress was achieved both in the EDPS supervisory and advisory tasks. Most Community institutions and bodies are making good progress in ensuring compliance with data protection rules, but there are still great challenges ahead. The EDPS supervision work is therefore putting more emphasis on measuring the level of compliance in practice, in particular through more systematic verifications on the spot, and on monitoring the implementation of recommendations in prior checking.
The EDPS also further improved his performance as an advisor to the European institutions and submitted opinions on an increasing number of legislative proposals. The majority of the EDPS opinions continued to concern issues related to the area of freedom, security and justice. Other subjects, such as e-privacy, public access to documents, the establishment of information systems and access to those systems, cross-border healthcare and new technologies were also quite prominent.
You can obtain a paper version of this Annual Report on EU Bookshop.
The EDPS published the first consultation draft of his video-surveillance guidelines. Data Protection Officers of the European institutions and bodies and other stakeholders were invited to comment on these guidelines by 15 September 2009. The EDPS held a workshop on 30 September with a view to elicit further feedback to improve the draft Guidelines and increase cooperation to ensure compliance with data protection principles.