The National Institute of Magistracy (NIM) in Bucharest hosted a unique double launching of the course on data protection and privacy rights, gathering around 70 judges, prosecutors and lawyers.

The event was opened by Nelu Ciobanu, NIM’s deputy director, who praised the EU-CoE ‘HELP in the 28’ Programme’s readiness to implement the course in Romania and the advantages of e-learning as cheap and outreach method.

Monica Livescu, from the National Bar Association called on legal professionals to uphold human rights in their daily work. To accommodate lawyers’ massive demand, she enthusiastically announced that her institution will replicate (on its own means) a second edition of the course beyond the current (numerous) group of ca. 40 who will follow the online course under the moderation of HELP national tutor Raluca Bercea.

An introduction on the field of DPPR ensued, centered on the CoE and ECHR standards including Convention 108 as well as the Romanian case law highlighting the Barbulescu case (surveillance of electronic correspondence sent from the workplace) and others regarding the collection of personal data, phone wiretapping, and secret services. The lecturer was Ana-Maria Telbis, member of HELP editorial board as well as HELP national tutor for the group of ca. 35 judges, prosecutors and magistrates (including from the Romanian Constitutional Court).

It was George Grigore, an expert from the National Authority for the Supervision of Personal Data Processing who presented the developments in the data protection sphere on European and national level, with the aim of raising awareness of the obligations under the new EU regulation adopted in 2016 and will be applicable as of May 2018. Apart from the enhanced protection of rights (e.g. portability) and describing different scenarios of data processing and data transfer flows within the EU and outside the EU, he stressed the importance of fines and the need for Data protection officer to enjoy independence, regardless of them being in-house employers or not.

The EU/CoE 'HELP in the 28' Programme was presented including its methodology as well as the content of this state-of-the-art course on how to put in practice the European system of data protection and privacy rights, stemming from both the EU and the CoE system. This very interactive course covers thematic areas such as media, medical data, e-communication, modern technologies (i.e., GPS, CCTV, drones) and privacy at the workplace. See here a presentation video of the course.

The course -in Romanian and adapted to the Romanian legal order- will be moderated online for the two distinct groups  by the national tutors over two months, after which they will be publicly available on line. In the meantime, the English version is already accessible for free at the 'HELP in the 28' website.