In today’s data driven economy in democratic societies, ensuring accountability of governments and fighting corruption is increasingly important, while safeguarding personal privacy is of growing concern. Public authorities must strike a delicate balance between guaranteeing access to the information that they hold and ensuring the right to personal data protection.
Under the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents – also known as the Tromsø Convention – everyone has the right to access State-held information regardless of the form in which it is recorded. Equally everyone has the right to protection of their personal data under the Council of Europe Convention for the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data – also known as “Convention 108”. Transparency of the public administration is also a key standard of the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO).
The intersection of the right to access to official documents and the right to personal data protection is often perceived as a difficult area. The Tromsø Convention provides an exemption to this right of access in order to protect privacy. Conversely, Convention 108 permits an exemption to personal data protection to enable access to information of public interest. However, it is not always self-evident how public authorities should act when providing access to or publishing at their own initiative a document which contains personal data, when dealing with a request for access to such a document or processing complaints by the data subjects or applicants for information.
The meeting explored this area of potential tension in an informative and pragmatic way.
Overall, the meeting seeked to promote a vision in which the balancing of transparency of the public administration and the responsible collection and handling of personal information is considered as an important indicator of good governance in democratic societies.
