Brussels, 11/09/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 11 September, the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) put forward its position on ongoing reform of European data protection laws, announced in January this year by the commissioner for justice, Viviane Reding. The CCBE was particularly critical of there being two distinct legal instruments: a regulation applicable to private companies and the public sector and a directive specifically focusing on matters of police and legal cooperation (replacing a 2008 framework decision).
The organisation indicated that rather than having two separate systems governing questions of civil law and the application of law, EU institutions should develop a single data protection system that is both comprehensive and of a high level. It regretted that the Commission had not decided to extend general data protection rules to the areas of police and legal cooperation in criminal matters. The president of the CCBE, Marcella Prunbauer-Glaser, added that similarly to the European data protection supervisor, the CCBE considers that processing data in the police and legal cooperation areas when tackling criminal matters involves specific risks for citizens and subsequently demands a level of protection that is as high as that included in the draft regulation.
The CCBE has also voiced specific objections with regard to the draft regulation and stipulates that, “Article 14 of the draft regulation sets out the principle that a data subject shall be informed about the fact that his/her data are being collected. There are exceptions to this rule... The list of exceptions however fails to include a specific provision for lawyers who are subject to strict professional secrecy (known in some jurisdictions as legal professional privilege) . A lawyer, for example, may thus be required to provide a client's opposing party with information and grant this party access to their data which was made known to him, provided the lawyer has recorded this data. This is clearly unacceptable. The lawyer would destroy his client's trust and would violate his obligation for professional secrecy by supplying his client and case-related data to the opponent”. Commission proposals will not be finalised before 2014. (SP/trans/fl)