Uzhgorod, 20-21 April 2017

Kharkiv, 6-7 July 2017

Protection of personal data is one of the most active areas of the Council of Europe intervention in terms of providing expert support to the Ukrainian authorities in amendment of the relevant legislation and awareness-raising of the state servants and other professional groups. Efficient functioning of the data protection system and its further improvement is one of the main tasks for the Ukrainian state on its path to the European integration and implementation of the European standards that could be inextricably linked with the protection of human rights and freedoms, including right to private life.

To support the Ukrainian authorities, namely Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner on Human Rights (Office of the Commissioner) in spread of information on the notion and sense of data protection and raising awareness of the Ukrainian citizens, especially public servants whose work are often connected with the processing of personal data, the Council of Europe in the framework of the Joint EU/CoE Programme “Strengthening Implementation of the European Human Rights Standards in Ukraine” has launched a series of tailored trainings on application of the data protection legislation and data protection principles in public and private environment.

Two trainings were organized on 20-21 April in Uzhgorod and on 6-7 July 2017 in Kharkiv respectively. They gathered more than 60 representatives of the educational sphere – administrative officials of schools, colleges, universities and staff members of the city and region councils from different regions of Ukraine. The representatives of mentioned institutions when dealing with or creating registries and processing personal data very often encounter the problems with the application of data protection legislation and finding proper balance between the right to privacy and freedom of information. All these problematic issues were explained and thoroughly considered within the trainings providing participants with the useful recommendations and clear guidance on how to deal with concrete cases based on the current legislation, including ECHR and ECtHR case-law.

The specifics of these trainings is that they are based on the results of the monitoring visits carried out by representatives of the Commissioner’s Office to some institutions on the eve of the trainings in each region where they were taken place. The results of the monitoring were presented within the trainings in order to discuss with the participants more practical cases from their daily work and improve their skills on identification of violations of personal data protection requirements and potential prevention of such violations in the future.

Further work in the area of personal data protection, which except other, include continuation of the awareness raising activities during the autumn-winter 2017 and extensive work on finalization and adoption of amended legislation in line with the latest shifts in regulation of the European Union and the Council of Europe Convention 108 will be supported by the Joint EU/CoE Programme “Strengthening Implementation of the European Human Rights Standards in Ukraine”.