European Commission launches infringement proceedings against Hungary

The European Commission announced today that it will launch accelerated infringement proceedings against Hungary, inter alia, due to the violation of independence of its data protection authority, since the new data protection legislation of Hungary prematurely terminated the Data Protection Commissioner’s term which should have originally ended only in 2014.

The respective press release is available here: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/12/24&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

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Infringement Procedure Against Hungary Due to the Violation of the Independence of the DPA?

As of 1 January 2012 a new Agency (Data Protection and Freedom of Information Agency / NAIH) is responsible for the compliance with data protection and freedom of information laws in Hungary.

According to the information of the news portal origo.hu, the European Commission would very shortly launch infringement proceedings against Hungary due to the termination of the office of the Data Protection Commissioner who served as data protection supervisor until 31 December 2011. Origo.hu also reports that Ms Viviane Reding has informally already communicated to Hungarian Government officials the EU Commission’s opinion that the termination of the Commissioner’s position prior to the end of its term of office (until 2014 ) and appointment of an entirely new data protection supervisor most probably violates the independence of data protection authorities articulated by the European Data Protection Directive. We have already provided an overview of the complaint submitted by Hungarian NGO’s to the European Commission in our earlier blog post.

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Report on the Conference on ‘The Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information 1995 – 2011’

  • Post category:Hungary

We are pleased to share a guest post by dr. Ákos Süle – managing partner of Süle Law Firm – who attended the latest conference of the Hungarian Data Protection Commissioner on 28 September 2011.

On 28 September 2011 we again celebrated the international Right to Information Day which is certainly supposed to be a joyful day and event for all data protection enthusiasts. This year however, the big Day was a little bit special since the related conference held by the Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (in the following: Commissioner) turned out to be the last one. As some of you already know, the Commissioner and his office will cease to exist as of 31 December 2011 and a new, probably less independent office will try to replace his duties, without the involvement of the current Commissioner, dr. András Jóri.

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Innen indultunk

Tévedtünk :-/