The results of the voting at the Committee of the Permanent Representatives of the Governments of the Member States to the European Union (Coreper) and at the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs of the European Parliament (LIBE) confirm Wojciech Wiewiórowski for a 5 year mandate as European Data Protection Supervisor.
The European Data Protection Supervisor is the EU’s independent data protection Authority. It supervises how the EU institutions and bodies process personal data to ensure compliance with privacy rules and advises them on all aspects of personal data processing and related policies and legislation. The EDPS also works with the national authorities of EU countries to ensure consistency in data protection.
The Members of the European Parliament (Civil Liberties Commitee) chose their order of preference of the candidates for the position of European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) in a secret ballot yesterday and Wojciech Wiewiórowski from Poland was selected as the top candidate with 36 votes.
They followed Wiewiórowski: Yann Padova from France gained 25 votes and Endre Szabó from Hungary obtained 3 votes.
The Civil Liberties Committee Chair will conveyed the outcome of the Civil Liberties Committee vote to the Conference of Presidents (EP President and the leaders of the political groups). Following their confirmation, the Parliament and the Council proceeded to formally appoint the new European Data Protection Supervisor.
Who is Wojciech Wiewiórowski?
The Polish Doctor in Law by the University of Gdansk, Wojciech Wiewiórowski, has been undertaking the responsibility as the acting European Data protection Supervisor (EDPS) replacing Giovanni Buttarelli, who passed by on 20th August 2019 before the expiration term of hos mandate, while the European Parliament and The EU Council name a new EDPS.
Wiewiórowski (1971) has been Assistant European Data Protection Supervisor since December 2014. He was appointed by a joint decision of the European Parliament and the Council on 4th December 2014 for a term of five years.
Before his appointment, he served as Inspector General for the Protection of Personal Data at thePolish Data Protection Authority, a position which he had held since 2010. He was also Vice Chairman of the Working Party Article 29 Group.
In 1995 he graduated from the Faculty of Law and Administration at the University of Gdańsk, Poland.
In 2000 he was awarded the academic degree of Doctor in Constitutional Law.
After graduation he worked as an editor and then a publisher in legal publishing houses such as Legal Publishing House LEX and Polish Professional Publishers (Wolters Kluwer Polska).
In 2002 he began work as a lecturer at Gdańsk College of Administration. In 2003 he was appointed Assistant Professor and Head of the Legal IT Department at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Gdańsk, with which he has been associated since 1995.
In 2006 he began working in public administration. Among other positions, he worked as an adviser in the field of e-government and information society for the Minister of Interior and Administration, and was Vice-President of the Regulatory Commission of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church.
In 2008 he took over the post of Director of the Informatisation Department at the Ministry of Interior and Administration. In addition to this, he represented Poland in the Committee on Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (the ISA Committee), assisting the European Commission. He was also appointed to represent the Archives Council in the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
In 2010 he was elected by the Polish Parliament for the post of Inspector General for the Protection of Personal Data (Polish Data Protection Commissioner) in the Polish Data Protection Authority, GIODO. He finished this term and was reelected for a second term in Summer 2014.
From February to November 2014, he served as Vice Chairman of the Working Party Article 29 Group.
European Data Protection Supervisor is the author of numerous studies, publications and lectures in the field of personal data protection, IT law, e-government and legal informatics. His areas of scientific activity include, firstly, Polish and European IT law, the processing and security of information, legal information retrieval systems, informatisation of public administration, electronic signature and application of semantic web and legal ontologies in legal information processing.
He is as well a member of the Polish Association for European Law.
Image over the headline.- Left: Wojciech Wiewiórowski (new European Data Protection Supervisor).Detail of the mage from his Linkedin feeds. To watch the original photo click here.
Right: Giovanni Buttarelli (former Data Protection Supervisor). Photo by Paul Clarke [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. To watch the original image, click here.
