Over 600 people at the meeting. Thank you for participation in the discussion on DPOs' independence

The day before yesterday we had the opportunity to meet with Data Protection Officers (DPOs) and representatives of organisations that associate DPOs or companies that employ DPOs. The meeting was held at the seat of the Personal Data Protection Office and remotely. Its purpose was to discuss the independence of DPOs.

The meeting was opened by Mirosław Wróblewski, the President of the Personal Data Protection Office, and was also attended by Agnieszka Grzelak, the Deputy President of the Personal Data Protection Office and Konrad Komornicki, the Deputy President of the Personal Data Protection Office. We also had the opportunity to listen to a speech by Gwendal Le Grand, the Deputy Head of the EDPB Secretariat. He spoke about the assumptions, objectives and forms of last year's CEF DPO action.

The meeting was an opportunity to discuss in detail and exchange views and experiences on specific problems and threats to DPOs’ independence. These include:

• burdening DPOs with controller responsibilities,
• concluding an data processing agreement between the controller and the DPO,
• as well as granting the DPO a power of attorney to represent the controller in data protection matters.

We also considered how supervisory authorities, controllers, DPOs and organisations associating DPOs can support the independence of the DPOs.

These topics were met with great interest. Although we were able to host a limited number of people at the seat of the Personal Data Protection Office, 570 persons attended the meeting remotely. The participants were very engaged in sharing their experiences and opinions, including through chat.

At the same time, we would like to inform you that the Personal Data Protection Office has launched a special e-mail address niezaleznoscIOD@uodo.gov.pl, where you will be able to send feedback on the topics discussed at the meeting until Tuesday (16.04).