The Committee of Convention 108 (T-PD) held its 49th Plenary Meeting in Strasbourg from 3 to 5 November 2025, to discuss current developments in data protection and future priorities.
The key developments were:
- The official adoption of the Work Programme 2026-2029.
- As the part of the new Work Programme, the preparation of actions regarding transborder flows of personal data and the approval of CoE MCC.
- The discussion based on the contributions by Ms Anamarija Mladinić, as rapporteur and Ms Murielle Popa Fabre, expert (Responsible AI) on “Data Protection in the Context of Large Language Models”.
- Further drafting of the Guidelines on “Data Protection in the Context of Neurosciences” with contribution from the rapporteur, Ms Alessandra Pierucci, and the expert input from Dr Eduardo Bertoni.
The Committee welcomed Ms Tamar Kaldani as the new Data Protection Commissioner of the Council of Europe and took a note of the information provided by her; Notably, on her intention to contribute to the effective implementation of the internal regulation of the Council of Europe and to actively promote the role of the Organization as an example throughout the world.
Organised back-to-back of the plenary meeting, the joint event ─ “Transparency and Privacy in Democratic Societies – Two Sides of the Same Coin” provided a first attempt to experts on the CoE Convention on Access to Official Documents – knows as the Tromsø Convention and from Convention 108 / Convention 108+ to discuss the intersection of the right to access to official documents and the right to privacy and to personal data protection. The speakers addressed different regulatory models of granting requests and ensuring access to personal data in public documents while balancing the rights to transparency and privacy.
As a result, the Committee of Convention 108 called upon all Parties to consider signing and ratifying the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents (CETS No. 205) and decided to reflect upon possibilities to further substantiate the procedure of balancing human rights in question when replying to access to public information requests.
Link to the abridged report of the plenary
Draft Work Programme 2026-2029
Compendium of the Model Contractual Clauses and list of countries where they have been approved
