France, Luxem­bourg and Bel­gi­um: The­se requi­re­ments app­ly to data pro­tec­tion officers

In recent weeks, both the French data pro­tec­tion super­vi­so­ry aut­ho­ri­ty Com­mis­si­on Natio­na­le de l’In­for­ma­tique et des Liber­tés (CNIL) (PDF only in French) and the Luxem­bourg data pro­tec­tion super­vi­so­ry aut­ho­ri­ty Com­mis­si­on natio­na­le pour la pro­tec­tion des don­nées (CNPD) (PDF only in French) have issued state­ments on requi­re­ments for com­pa­ny data pro­tec­tion offi­cers. Pre­vious­ly, the Bel­gi­an data pro­tec­tion super­vi­so­ry aut­ho­ri­ty, the Auto­ri­té de pro­tec­tion des don­nées (APD) (PDF only in French), had alre­a­dy com­men­ted on this. We take the­se opi­ni­ons and decis­i­ons as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pre­sent the requi­re­ments for the qua­li­fi­ca­ti­ons of a data pro­tec­tion offi­cer in this artic­le and to take a clo­ser look at the spe­cial fea­tures in France, Luxem­bourg and Belgium.

Pro­fes­sio­nal qua­li­fi­ca­ti­ons and exper­ti­se of data pro­tec­tion officers

Pur­su­ant to Artic­le 37(5) GDPR, the Data Pro­tec­tion Offi­cer is to be appoin­ted on the basis of his/her pro­fes­sio­nal qua­li­fi­ca­ti­ons and exper­ti­se in the field of data pro­tec­tion law and prac­ti­ce, as well as his/her abili­ty to per­form the duties pur­su­ant to Artic­le 39 GDPR.

The pro­fes­sio­nal qua­li­fi­ca­ti­ons and exper­ti­se of data pro­tec­tion offi­cers are always a sub­ject of dis­pu­te when review­ed by the data pro­tec­tion super­vi­so­ry aut­ho­ri­ty, even in other Euro­pean count­ries. Even though a data pro­tec­tion offi­cer does not have to have under­go­ne any spe­ci­fic pro­fes­sio­nal trai­ning to be able to per­form the func­tion, super­vi­so­ry aut­ho­ri­ties pay strict atten­ti­on to ensu­ring that the offi­cer is also able to per­form the duties assi­gned to him or her in accordance with the GDPR.

For exam­p­le, the Bel­gi­an data pro­tec­tion super­vi­so­ry aut­ho­ri­ty APD impo­sed a fine against a muni­ci­pa­li­ty (PDF only in French) becau­se the muni­ci­pa­li­ty was unable to ade­qua­te­ly explain why the appoin­ted data pro­tec­tion offi­cer was sui­ta­ble to per­form his func­tion. In the cour­se of the review, APD in par­ti­cu­lar did not accept the argu­ment that the muni­ci­pa­li­ty had sel­ec­ted the “most sui­ta­ble” can­di­da­te: Just becau­se a cer­tain per­son is the most sui­ta­ble among seve­ral can­di­da­tes or appli­cants does not mean that he or she is actual­ly sui­ta­ble. In its decis­i­on, APD stres­sed the importance of pay­ing atten­ti­on to both the legal and tech­ni­cal skills of the DPO.

The Luxem­bourg data pro­tec­tion super­vi­so­ry aut­ho­ri­ty CNPD recent­ly took a dif­fe­rent approach: In a decis­i­on dated 13 Octo­ber 2021, it impo­sed a fine on a com­pa­ny becau­se the company’s data pro­tec­tion offi­cer did not have at least three years of pro­fes­sio­nal expe­ri­ence in the field of data pro­tec­tion (PDF only in French). Such pro­fes­sio­nal expe­ri­ence, the CNPD argued, is requi­red to demons­tra­te the neces­sa­ry qualifications.

Neither the Ger­man super­vi­so­ry (PDF) aut­ho­ri­ties nor the French CNIL in their new­ly published gui­de­lines for data pro­tec­tion com­mis­sio­ners (PDF only in French) requi­re such a peri­od of pro­fes­sio­nal expe­ri­ence for the pro­per appoint­ment of data pro­tec­tion offi­cers. Howe­ver, the requi­re­ments for the qua­li­fi­ca­ti­ons and sui­ta­bi­li­ty of DPOs must also be docu­men­ted in detail in the case of doubt.

In order to demons­tra­te suf­fi­ci­ent exper­ti­se in data pro­tec­tion law, it is neces­sa­ry for the per­son appoin­ted as data pro­tec­tion offi­cer to be fami­li­ar with all data pro­tec­tion regu­la­ti­ons rele­vant to the pro­ces­sing ope­ra­ti­ons of the respec­ti­ve enti­ty and also to be able to app­ly them, inclu­ding area-specific data pro­tec­tion regulations.

As a rule, howe­ver, such know­ledge can only be achie­ved through peri­odic fur­ther edu­ca­ti­on and trai­ning of the data pro­tec­tion offi­cer, sin­ce new tech­no­lo­gies and chan­ging legal requi­re­ments must con­stant­ly be taken into account. In order to enable this trai­ning and to pro­vi­de the tech­ni­cal and human resour­ces, the con­trol­ler or pro­ces­sor are obli­ged as fol­lows from the appoint­ment of the data pro­tec­tion offi­cer pur­su­ant to Artic­le 38(2) GDPR: “The Con­trol­ler and Pro­ces­sor shall sup­port the Data Pro­tec­tion Offi­cer in the per­for­mance of his or her duties pur­su­ant to Artic­le 39 by pro­vi­ding the resour­ces and access to per­so­nal data and pro­ces­sing ope­ra­ti­ons neces­sa­ry for the per­for­mance of tho­se duties and the resour­ces neces­sa­ry to main­tain his or her expertise.”

In spe­ci­fic cases, an alter­na­ti­ve to full qua­li­fi­ca­ti­ons on the part of the data pro­tec­tion offi­cer may be to call in exter­nal experts to sup­ple­ment the officer’s own exper­ti­se. The fact that such an approach satis­fies the legal requi­re­ments has alre­a­dy been con­firm­ed by the Sta­te Labour Court of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in its judgment of 25 Febru­ary 2020 (Case No. 5 Sa 108/19) (only in Ger­man): “If the data pro­tec­tion offi­cer has his or her own qua­li­fi­ca­ti­ons in only one sub­area, it is suf­fi­ci­ent if he or she is able to rely on expert co-workers for the rest.”

The aca­de­mic lite­ra­tu­re is near­ly unani­mous in the opi­ni­on that the data pro­tec­tion offi­cer should “seek advice from lawy­ers and data secu­ri­ty experts if neces­sa­ry” (Taeger/Gabel/Scheja, 3rd Edi­ti­on 2019, Artic­le 37 GDPR, Mar­gi­nal No. 65) and that “the pos­si­bi­li­ty (which exists at all times and is not limi­t­ed by pri­or appr­oval requi­re­ments in spe­ci­fic cases, but at most by an ade­qua­te over­all bud­get) to obtain exter­nal legal advice or invol­ve IT spe­cia­lists in cases of more com­pli­ca­ted pro­blems” can com­pen­sa­te for any miss­ing qua­li­fi­ca­ti­ons on the part of the data pro­tec­tion offi­cer (Kühling/Buchner/Bergt, 3rd Edi­ti­on 2020, Artic­le 37 GDPR, Mar­gi­nal No. 34).

In addi­ti­on to con­ser­ving the company’s own per­son­nel resour­ces and capa­ci­ties, such an approach also has the advan­ta­ge that the per­son appoin­ted as data pro­tec­tion offi­cer does not have to be equal­ly qua­li­fied in all are­as of data pro­tec­tion law. In prac­ti­ce, the sel­ec­ti­ve use of exter­nal experts when neces­sa­ry is the­r­e­fo­re often the more sui­ta­ble opti­on and is also par­ti­cu­lar­ly sui­ta­ble for absor­bing peak workloads.

Sum­ma­ry

Num­e­rous decis­i­ons alre­a­dy issued and fines impo­sed on com­pa­nies due to the fail­ure to appoint or the incor­rect appoint­ment of a data pro­tec­tion offi­cer show that this requi­re­ment in the GDPR and the Ger­man Fede­ral Data Pro­tec­tion Act (BDSG) is high­ly rele­vant. Due to the com­ple­xi­ty of the spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­ons and the legal requi­re­ments, avo­ida­ble errors regu­lar­ly even occur when the data pro­tec­tion offi­cer per­forms his or her duties.

In addi­ti­on to the pro­per appoint­ment and qua­li­fi­ca­ti­ons of the data pro­tec­tion offi­cer, com­pa­nies should the­r­e­fo­re make use of exter­nal and spe­cia­li­sed legal advice to avo­id fines, espe­ci­al­ly in the case of com­plex issues.

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