The President of Personal Data Protection Service, Prof. Dr. Dr. Lela Janashvili moderated one of the panels of the European Conference of Data Protection Authorities

2023-05-16 13:17:46
At the Conference of the European Data Protection Authorities (the so-called "Spring Conference), the President of the Personal Data Protection Service - Prof. Dr. Dr. Lela Janashvili, moderated the panel on the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on the topic of personal data protection.

In the opening part of the panel session, Prof. Dr. Dr. Lela Janashvili spoke about the significance of implementing the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union in the decisions made by the data protection supervisory authorities. Additionally, the President pointed out that the practice of international courts develops in accordance with the growing technological progress and reflects the modern trends of personal data protection law. The European Court of Human Rights has made a number of important decisions regarding Article 8 of the Convention. Within the framework of the panel, the Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights —  Dr. Marko Bošnjak, gave a speech on the underlined issue. The second panellist — Prof. Dr. Hielke Hijmans, who is a President of the Litigation Chamber and member Executive Board of the Belgian Data Protection Authority, also a member of the Committee of Experts on International Migration, Refugee and Criminal Law (Meijers Committee) and an academic staff member at the Free University of Brussels and the University of Luxembourg, discussed the latest practice of the Court of Justice of the European Union and significant judgements made in the field of personal data protection. In the scope of the panel, Dr. Gergely Barabás, Legal Counsel and Head of the Legal Service Unit of the Hungarian National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, former administrative law judge and data protection expert, also gave a speech. He spoke about the interplay of the EU and Hungarian law and the latest judicial practice. In the end, Prof. Dr. Dr. Lela Janashvili summarized the panel and thanked the speakers for their presentations.

The next panel of the Conference was devoted to a summary of the activities of the Conference Steering Group of the previous convocation, an overview of the 2022 European Case Handling Workshop, and an introduction to the next host of the Conference. Within the scope of the panel, Ana Tokhadze - Head of the International Relations, Analytics, and Strategic Development Department of the Service, gave a speech and introduced the audience to the results of the content part and the results of the satisfaction survey of the participants of the European Case Handling Workshop, held in Tbilisi last year. In addition, information on the number of participants and speakers of the event and the thematic topics covered by the agenda was also introduced. To emphasize the role of the Personal Data Protection Service of Georgia in the development of the personal data protection law, within the report, Ana Tokhadze also presented the Georgian and English-language scientific periodic publication of the Service - “Journal of Personal Data Protection Law”, which is run by an international editorial board. The Journal aims to conduct a comparative legal discourse in the field. On behalf of the Service, Ana Tokhadze thanked the European Data Protection Supervisor — Prof. Dr. Wojciech Wiewiórowski, the Director of the Croatian Personal Data Protection Agency (AZOP) — Zdravko Vukić, the President of the Italian Data Protection Authority — Prof. Dr. Pasquale Stanzione for the welcome letters published in the first issue of the Journal; also, the gratitude was extended to the President of the Hungarian National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information — Prof. Dr. Attila Péterfalvi and his colleague — Dr. Dániel Eszteri for a published scientific article. Additionally, the audience was introduced to the official website of the "Journal of Personal Data Protection Law" (www.journal.pdps.ge), where the English language edition is available along with the Georgian version of the publication ( https://journal.pdps.ge/doc/English%20Version%20Journal.pdf ).