The Council of Europe publishes the report “Digital solutions to fight COVID-19”, which analyses the impact on the rights to privacy and data protection of the measures taken to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in the 55 African, Latin-American and European countries Parties to Convention 108. It includes an in-depth and technical review of the use of digital contact tracing applications and monitoring tools.

The report identifies a number of shortcomings in some of the legal and technical measures adopted and calls on governments to notably ensure transparency of digital solutions in order to ensure greater respect of the rights to privacy and data protection. It also regrets that in spite of numerous calls for coordination and interoperability of digital solutions to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries have individually implemented widely diverging systems, thereby limiting the efficiency of the measures taken.

This report, published on the eve of the annual meeting of the Global Privacy Assembly (GPA) is aimed at contributing to the important co-operation between data protection authorities, on challenges shared by all.