Brussels, 03/03/2005 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has published 16 guidelines on data protection. The guidelines set out the conditions under which payment systems, banks and other payment service providers may operate national or cross-border databases on merchants whose contracts to participate in their systems have been terminated. The guidelines will be reviewed in a year's time. The databases list the merchants' names based on objective criteria related to irregularities and risks. They do not contain any sensitive data (offences, criminal prosecutions, security measures) on merchants or on individual cardholders. They have merely been set up so that banks can consult them and take an informed decision before signing new contracts. Merchants whose data are contained on a database are entitled to information about the data, which they may access and have corrected; and are also entitled to compensation in the event that their data are misused. The guidelines were endorsed by the “Article 29 Data Protection Working Party”, an independent advisory body in field of data protection and privacy rights.