At its 70^th Plenary Session held on 10 October 2022, the EDPB adopted various documents:

• a list of procedural aspects in national law that the EDPB says could benefit from further harmonisation at EU level to facilitate GDPR enforcement; the list has been sent to the European Commission for its consideration; it includes the following, all of which are outside the EDPB’s remit:
  1. the status and rights of parties to administrative procedures;
  2. procedural deadlines;
  3. requirements for admissibility or dismissal of complaints;
  4. investigative powers of Supervisory Authorities; and
  5. practical implementation of the cooperation procedure;
• an Opinion on the approval by the EDPB of the first European Data Protection Seal pursuant to Article 42(5) of the GDPR, the Europrivacy certification criteria submitted by the Luxembourg data protection authority; the Europrivacy certification mechanism is a general scheme that targets a large range of different processing operations performed by both controllers and processors in various sectors; the scheme includes specific criteria that make it scalable and applicable to specific processing operations or sectors of activity; certification under the Data Protection Seal has validity in all EU Member States; it allows different controllers and processors in different countries to achieve the same level of compliance for similar processing operations; and
• a statement on the digital euro, repeating the importance of ensuring privacy and data protection by design and default; the EDPB cautions against the use of systematic validation and tracing of all transactions in digital euros; it recommends that the digital euro is made available both online and offline, with a threshold below which no tracing is possible, to allow full anonymity of daily transactions; the EDPB also called on the European Central Bank and the European Commission to enhance public debate on the digital euro project to ensure it meets the highest standards of privacy and data protection.

To read the EDPB’s press release in full and for links to the adopted documents, click here.