The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection received today, at their request, representatives of the Chamber of enforcement officers, and talked with them about the warning on the unlawful processing of personal data of debtors - natural persons by the Chamber, which the Commissioner sent to the Chamber a few days ago.

The Commissioner has once again warned the Chamber that the Rulebook of the Chamber, in any case cannot constitute a valid legal basis for the introduction of the processing of personal data, because accordance to the Constitution it can only be a law, not a bylaw.

Processing of personal data in this particular case is contrary to the Law on Personal Data Protection, not only because of inadequate legal basis, but also non-existence of purpose. Law on Personal Data Protection provides that the processing shall not be permitted if it is disproportionate to the purpose, and in this case, the purpose of submitting particular information on authentic documents by creditors to the Chamber of enforcement officers (under the Law on Enforcement and Security), is that enforcement officers who will carry out the enforcement are evenly distributed according to alphabetical order of their entry in the directory. That purpose can be achieved quite obviously by only processing data on the executive title itself (document number, place without address, the amount due), and the processing of personal data of a debtor is completely unnecessary from the point of purpose. This would, at the same time, lead to the situation that, except that enforcement officers who carry out the enforcement are in possession of personal data, the Chamber unnecessary forms a huge database of personal data and therefore it opens the risks associated with the manner and length of storage, protection, possible misuse of data, etc.

Unlawful processing of personal data by the Chamber was caused, inter alia, by the fact that Ministry of Justice gave approval to the "Rulebook on the contents and manner of submitting a request to the Chamber of enforcement officers for determining the competent enforcement officer" while failing to point out the Chamber that provisions which regulate processing of personal data are unconstitutional and unfit for the purpose.

The representatives of the Chamber confirmed to fully understand the warning of the Commissioner, and they will immediately stop the unlawful processing of personal data, destroy all personal data collected, and harmonize the Rulebook of the Chamber in line with the provisions of the Law on Personal Data Protection.