For 40 years, the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data - Convention 108 – has been the only international legally binding instrument on the protection of privacy and personal data. Its modernised version, Convention 108+, helps preserving human dignity while providing an enabling and secure framework to free flow of data. Read more and listen to the views of prominent personalities.
Protecting private life
You go somewhere, you buy something, you apply for a job, you pay your bills : you live... and at each of those moments of your life, your personal information is used, collected, processed. In order to protect your right to private life, with regard to the automatic processing of your personal data, the Council of Europe elaborated the "Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data".
Thirty years after its entry into force, this Convention still remains the only binding international legal instrument in the field, with a potential worldwide scope of application.
Convention 108+ Convention for the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data
Handbook on European data protection law - 2018 edition
The rapid development of information technology has exacerbated the need for robust personal data protection, the right to which is safeguarded by both European Union (EU) and Council of Europe (CoE) instruments. Safeguarding this important right entails new and significant challenges as technological advances expand the frontiers of areas such as surveillance, communication interception and data storage. This handbook is designed to familiarise legal practitioners not specialised in data protection with this emerging area of the law. It provides an overview of the EU’s and the CoE’s applicable legal frameworks. It also explains key case law, summarising major rulings of both the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights. In addition, it presents hypothetical scenarios that serve as practical illustrations of the diverse issues encountered in this ever-evolving field.
