Conference of the European Union Data Protection Commissioners

24/25 April 1996 Town Hall, Manchester

Over the last two days the United Kingdom Data Protection Registrar, Mrs Elizabeth France, has chaired the annual Conference of the EU Data Protection Commissioners.

"It has been a pleasure to welcome my colleagues to Manchester", said Mrs France. "It is most important that we co-operate together to protect the privacy of information about individuals - especially in the world of the Internet where such information is readily sent round the globe."

Mrs France added, "The three decisions of greatest importance were:

1. Calling upon the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and the Member States to ensure that data protection rules - already applied in Member States - should be honoured by the institutions of the Community;

2. Asking the Council of Ministers to give urgent consideration to setting up in advance a Data Protection Supervisory Body to help develop and audit the system for maintaining criminal intelligence files in the new European Police Office and stressing the importance of building in privacy protection when the new computer system is designed; and

3. Agreeing to work over the next year on Privacy Enhancing Technologies to promote these techniques for reducing the extent to which personally identifiable information is used in information systems, with a view to developing pilot projects which can be examined at their next annual meeting and used as models to promote the further adoption of these techniques in industry, commerce and public administration."

The Commissioners hope that their next annual Conference will take place in Vienna in the spring of 1997.

Mrs France concluded, "I should like to stress that all our work is aimed at improving the privacy of individuals. We all hope that the implementation of the new EU Data Protection Directive will strengthen individual rights throughout the European Union."

25 April 1996

V2.1

Note for Editors:

The subjects discussed included:

1. the steps being taken to implement in each Member State the recently approved EU Data Protection Directive;

2. compliance by the EU institutions with data protection rules;

3. the inadequacy of protection when data is sent to some third countries;

4. the special draft data protection directive for telecommunications systems;

5. the review of the Consumer Credit Directive;

6. encryption and other technical means of keeping information private;

7. co-operation between data protection authorities themselves and with other bodies such as the European Commission and the Council of Europe; and

8. the setting up of the European Police Office [Europol] in the Hague and the development of its criminal intelligence database.

For further information please contact:

Barrie Kelly

Press Officer

Office of the Data Protection Registrar

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

SK9 5AF

Telephone: 01625 545776