The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has applied across the European Union (EU) since 25 May 2018. One year on, this paper looks at how the new regulation has affected the daily work of civil society organisations (CSOs).
This report is FRA’s second publication addressing a European Parliament request for in-depth research on the impact of surveillance on fundamental rights. It updates FRA’s 2015 legal analysis on the topic, and supplements that analysis with field-based insights gained from extensive interviews with diverse experts in intelligence and related fields, including its oversight.
In 2006 the EU issued its Data Retention Directive. According to the Directive, EU Member States had to store electronic telecommunications data for at least six months and at most 24 months for investigating, detecting and prosecuting serious crime. In 2016, with an EU legal framework on data retention still lacking, the CJEU further clarified what safeguards are required for data retention to be lawful.This paper looks at amendments to national data retention laws in 2016 after the Digital Rights Ireland judgment.
Michael O'Flaherty outlines fundamental rights considerations when developing technological responses to public health, as he introduces the focus of FRA's next COVID-19 bulletin.
The rapid development of information technology has exacerbated the need for robust personal data protection, the right to which is safeguarded by both European Union (EU) and Council of Europe (CoE) instruments. Safeguarding this important right entails new and significant challenges as technological advances expand the frontiers of areas such as surveillance, communication interception and data storage. This handbook is designed to familiarise legal practitioners not specialised in data protection with this emerging area of the law.
This leaflet assists officers and authorities to inform asylum applicants and migrants in an understandable and accessible way about the processing of their fingerprints in Eurodac.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has applied across the European Union (EU) since 25 May 2018. One year on, this paper looks at how the new regulation has affected the daily work of civil society organisations (CSOs).
This guide explains what profiling is, the legal frameworks that regulate it, and why conducting profiling lawfully is both necessary to comply with fundamental rights and crucial for effective policing and border management. The guide also provides practical guidance on how to avoid unlawful profiling in police and border management operations.
With terrorism, cyber-attacks and sophisticated cross-border criminal networks posing growing threats, the work of intelligence services has become more urgent, complex and international. Such work can strongly interfere with fundamental rights, especially privacy and data protection. While continuous technological advances potentially exacerbate the threat of such interference, effective oversight and remedies can curb the potential for abuse.
This video blog by FRA Director Michael O'Flaherty is released periodically and will address burning fundamental rights themes.
This is the recording of the online press briefing about mass surveillance as presented by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) on 16 October 2017.
This report is FRA’s second publication addressing a European Parliament request for in-depth research on the impact of surveillance on fundamental rights. It updates FRA’s 2015 legal analysis on the topic, and supplements that analysis with field-based insights gained from extensive interviews with diverse experts in intelligence and related fields, including its oversight.
In 2006 the EU issued its Data Retention Directive. According to the Directive, EU Member States had to store electronic telecommunications data for at least six months and at most 24 months for investigating, detecting and prosecuting serious crime. In 2016, with an EU legal framework on data retention still lacking, the CJEU further clarified what safeguards are required for data retention to be lawful.This paper looks at amendments to national data retention laws in 2016 after the Digital Rights Ireland judgment.
This report, drafted in response to the European Parliament’s call for thorough research on fundamental rights protection in the context of surveillance, maps and analyses the legal frameworks on surveillance in place in EU Member States.
FRA was requested by the European Commission (EC) in January 2014 to provide practical guidance on the processing of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data for law enforcement purposes, in light of efforts by Member States to establish national PNR systems. As a result, in informal consultation with EC services and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) and building on opinions FRA, the EDPS and the Article 29 Working Party on PNR, FRA presented twelve fundamental rights considerations to EU Member States experts at technical level.
Following a request by the European Parliament on 5 September 2012 for an analysis of the fundamental rights issues associated with the proposed EU data protection reform package, FRA issued its opinion on the draft legislation on 1 October 2012.
When a decision to stop an individual is motivated solely or mainly by virtue of a person's race, ethnicity or religion, this constitutes discriminatory ethnic profiling. Such practices can serve to alienate certain communities in the EU, and in turn can contribute to inefficient policing. The FRA guide aims to help the police address and avoid discriminatory ethnic profiling, and is designed to be used as a tool for more effective policing.
The EU plays a pioneering role in the protection of personal data. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU enshrines the right to data protection as an autonomous fundamental right. Despite the underlying importance and centrality of the right to data protection in the EU, many deficiencies are present in the data protection system. This study on data protection identifies deficiencies in the EU Member States.