Annual Report 2024: acting for the future of data protection
The EDPS presented its Annual Report 2024 today, concluding its 2020 - 2024 Mandate focusing on shaping a safer digital future, and marking the institution’s two-decades of protecting people’s privacy and personal data.
Wojciech Wiewiórowski, EDPS, said: “The digital landscape is in constant movement - that is a fact that the EDPS has worked with over the last 20 years. We can’t predict the future with exactitude, but what we can do is use our resources, human intelligence and diverse expertise in technology and privacy to prepare for the diverse possibilities and risks that the digital landscape presents.”
This is precisely what the EDPS has been doing in 2024. Preparing for the digital and data protection future, with tangible and concrete actions.
This year saw the creation of the Artificial Intelligence Unit, and the unveiling of an AI Strategy based on Governance, Risk Management and Supervision, as the EDPS takes on its new dual role as competent market surveillance authority for the supervision of AI systems, and notified body for assessing the conformity of certain high-risk AI systems. The EDPS takes on this mission to ensure that EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies (EUIs)’s development and use of AI tools uphold the highest EU data protection standards.
Anticipating the continuous digital grind is also deployed at the EDPS with our Foresight projects including the monitoring of technologies. This year, the EDPS’ efforts in this area concentrated on exploring, understanding and explaining the benefits and limits on data protection of AI-led technologies.
From a Policy and Consultation perspective, we issued 97 legislative consultations - a record number, advising the EU-co legislator on the data protection aspects of upcoming EU Regulations permeating to the Digital Rulebook, Health, Justice and Home Affairs, Digital Wallets, proving the direct impact on EU citizens and their fundamental rights to privacy.
As the past year has demonstrated, being forward-looking is essential, but also, building a safer digital future starts today. In this sense, we doubled-down on our supervision and enforcement actions, by providing the necessary tools to EUIs, either in the form of Supervisory Opinions, verifying and authorising international transfers, training sessions, data protection officers’ networking fora, to ensure compliance with EU data protection laws now, and in the future.
Constructing a sustainable future for data protection can only be achieved with robust foundations, says Supervisor Wojciech Wiewiórowski. Part of these foundations is collaboration to ensure consistent application of EU data protection rules elevating these to global standards, he writes in his Annual Report 2024. With this in mind, we steadily worked with the European Data Protection Board, of which we are a member and provider of its Secretariat, to deal with EU-wide data protection preoccupations together. We also use our influence internationally, through our participation and leadership at the G7 of data protection and privacy authorities, international organisations’ workshop and other international platforms for cooperation.
The rules for data protection in the EU institutions, as well as the duties of the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), are set out in Regulation (EU) 2018/1725.
About the EDPS: The EDPS is the independent supervisory authority with responsibility for monitoring the processing of personal data by the EU institutions and bodies, advising on policies and legislation that affect privacy and cooperating with similar authorities to ensure consistent data protection. Our mission is also to raise awareness on risks and protect people’s rights and freedoms when their personal data is processed.
Wojciech Wiewiórowski (EDPS) was appointed by a joint decision of the European Parliament and the Council to serve a five-year term, beginning on 6 December 2019.