ICC marks Data Protection Day 2011

Monday, 31 January 2011 00:37 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

THE International Chamber of Commerce participated in a high-level conference in Brussels on 28 January jointly organised by the Council of Europe and European Commission to mark the occasion of Data Protection Day 2011.

The conference, ‘Data Protection 30 Years Later: From European to International Standards,’ aimed to raise awareness on data protection and promote it as a fundamental right. It featured welcome messages from Viviane Reding, Vice-President of the European Commission, and Thorbjorn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe.

ICC participated in the panel entitled ‘From European to International Standards on Data Protection,’ which was moderated by Wojciech Rafal Wiewiorowski, Polish Inspector General for the Protection of Personal Data. ICC’s representative on the panel was Domenico Romanazzi, who is Head of the Group Data Protection Office, Legal Department of Deutsche Bank, and a member of the ICC Task Force on Privacy and the Protection of Personal Data. In his presentation Romanazzi stressed the need for more harmonised legal rules for data protection and the importance of facilitating transborder data flows to further economic growth and technical innovation.

“ICC has been an avid supporter of Data Protection Day since its inception five years ago,” said Christopher Kuner, Chair of the ICC Task Force. “ICC recognises the importance of data protection both as a right and as an essential building block for the global economy in terms of online and offline trade.”

ICC has a long tradition of working with the Council of Europe and the European Commission to improve the legal framework for data protection, which has included participation by ICC from the 1990s to the present as the sole business organisation to hold observer status in the Council of Europe’s Consultative Committee on Data Protection; joint adoption in 1992 by ICC, the Council of Europe, and the European Commission of standard contractual clauses for international data transfers; and adoption in 2004 and 2010 by the European Commission of standard contractual clauses for data transfers originally proposed by ICC.