In Reaction to the Statement of Media NGOs, NCPPD Promises to Amend Some Provisions on the Access to Information and Freedom of Expression

The representatives National Center for Personal Data Protection (NCPDP) will present to the MPs some of the amendments of the draft Law on Personal Data Protection for the media benefit. The exclusion of the media from the category of subjects sanctioned by the Center and other proposals are currently being examined by NCPDP. Victoria Muntean, deputy director of thee Center, told about this within a technical meeting, on 3 December in Chisinau, where the representatives of civil society and experts in protection data were invited.

The meeting was organised at the initiative of the Center to explain the position of media non-governmental organisations to authorities, after a declaration was published, in which NGOs express their concern regarding registering the draft Law developed by the NCPDP in the Parliament, on 22 November 2018, by which the journalists’ access to personal data would become more difficult.
During the discussions, the lawyer Tatiana Puiu, the representative of the Freedom House organisation in Moldova, mentioned that the authors of this project did not take into account the laws on access to information and freedom of expression in articles related to the activity of journalists.

The lawyer said that the Regulation of European Union, on the basis of which the draft was developed, provide for that the legislator should take into account the national specifics of each country. ‘The reality in Moldova has not been taken into account’, Puiu said.
In her turn, Jekaterina Macuka, a Twinning resident adviser who surveys the Data Protection Center, said that the draft was developed both on the basis of the European Regulation and the national legislation. She explained that the provisions of Article 12, which relate to journalistic activity and which raised the dissatisfaction of civil society, were introduced in order to balance the rights of journalists to present public information and the personal data protection. The article is also based on the principles of transparency, legality and honesty.
Jekaterina Macuka proposed to complete the article with a paragraph that would refer to the laws on access to information and freedom of expression, where it will be stipulated how the personal data should be processed by the media.

In her turn, Victoria Muntean also said that the media are not required to register themselves as a personal data operators, according to this draft law. At the same time, she said that the Center will review the possibility of excluding from the authority’s duties the sanctioning of the media for violating this law.
We remind that the Parliament voted the draft new Law on Personal Data Protection, on 30 November, previously criticized by civil society. However, Speaker Andrian Candu said that the document will be publicly debated and adopted in final reading by the future Parliament.