Upon the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, our everyday life changed to the extent that we were afraid that components of our Europe would be stolen from us forever.Our trainees managed to organise a successful and insightful webinar on privacy and data protection, highlighting that the pillars of democratic systems based on the rule of law should be preserved and prove their resilience vis-à-vis an emergency.

Inevitably, the subject of their webinar affected by the reality of COVID-19, focused on the repercussions of this global health crisis on the fundamental right to data protection.

Our trainees explain their experience and provide further details on the outcome of the debate.

Here is their story.

Wojciech Wiewiórowski

Since the last meeting of the network of data protection officers (DPOs) in the EU institutions and bodies (EUIs), in Florence on 7 November 2019, our lives have changed dramatically.

Our way of living and working has been disrupted as governments put in place measures to halt the spread of the Covid-19 virus.

When we started our work on the Strategy for the five-year mandate of the European Data Protection Supervisor, one of the first issues we discussed was whether it should be either a living document, ready to be changed or adjusted, or a robust, future-proof plan. 

If you believe everything you read in the papers or see in films, artificial intelligence (AI) is either going to be the saviour or the downfall of the world as we know it. While we’re not yet witnessing either extreme, it is not under dispute that the various applications of AI raise a number of challenges for those defending the rights and freedoms of individuals.