Several different large-scale IT
databases are used by the EU to facilitate police cooperation and to help
manage borders and migration. The EU aims to improve the efficiency of these
databases by making them more interoperable, or capable of communicating and
exchanging information.
Any new proposal must ensure full respect for data protection rules, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) said in a published contribution to the debate on interoperability.
According to their official statement, the EDPS looks forward to the publication of the Commission’s forthcoming legislative proposal. They encourage the Commission to clearly define the problems interoperability aims to solve and to plainly set out the specific categories of data to be processed and the purpose for doing so. Only once this information is available can the current debate on the impact of interoperability on fundamental rights move forward.
If it is to be fully compliant with data protection rules, the EDPS recommends that any proposal involving new forms of data processing must be shown to be both necessary and proportionate in relation to clearly stated objectives. Once this has been established, compliance with data protection rules must then be ensured through the application of principles such as data protection by design and by default and the implementation of appropriate security measures.
Read the full statement here.