The General Data Protection Regulation: what does the public authoritiesand bodies need to know and to do? The rise of the data protection officer

• Author: Marta Claudia Cliza - Laura Cristiana Spataru Negura
• Position: University of Bucharest, Romania - University of Bucharest, Romania
• Pages: 489-501

The General Data Protection Regulation: what does the public

authorities and bodies need to know and to do?

The rise of the data protection officer

Associate professor Marta-Claudia CLIZA1

Assistant professor Laura-Cristiana SPATARU-NEGURA2

Abstract

On 25 May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation will come into force in

all the Member States of the European Union, replacing the Directive 95/46/EC on the

protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free

movement of such data and, additionally, in Romania, the Law no. 677 dated 21 November

2001 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and the

free movement of such data. This paper intends to analyse the regulation’s provisions

regarding the public authorities and bodies of a Member State, in order to discover how

Romanian authorities should envisage to organise the processing of personal data. We shall

reveal the steps that have to be taken by the respective entities of the State. Among the most

important steps, we consider it essential to designate a data protection officer. Having in

view that the European regulation expressly provides that those entities must designate a

data protection officer, in this paper we shall emphasize what are the tasks, the role, the

responsibilities, the qualities of the data protection officer.

Keywords: data protection, DPO, GDPR, public authority, public body.

JEL Classification: K00, K23, K33

1. Introductive considerations regarding the General Data Protection

Regulation

It is obvious that nowadays the law experiences a growing development and

assertion in the most varied areas of the society, appearing new legal branches, out

of which the most important at the European level, the European Union law, which

leads to a widening of the action sphere of the law.

There is a real process of legal ideological and institutional contamination.

In this reality marked by the encounter of the legal civilizations, lawyers can no

longer approach the phenomenon only from the perspective of national legal

traditions, but also from the point of view of the interdependencies imposed by the

competition of the legal values belonging to the various spaces of law.

1 Marta-Claudia Cliza - Faculty of Law, “Nicolae Titulescu” University of Bucharest, Romania,

cliza_claudia@yahoo.com.

2 Laura-Cristiana Spătaru-Negură - Faculty of Law, „Nicolae Titulescu” University of Bucharest,

Romania, negura_laura@yahoo.com.