It has been just a month ago that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) entered into application, the long awaited revamp of the EU’s data protection rules. Under the GDPR, the supervisory authorities of the Member States closely cooperate to ensure a consistent application of the GDPR throughout the European Union, as well as consistent protection of individuals. They assist each other and coordinate decision-making in these cross-border data protection cases. Via the so-called consistency mechanism the European Data Protection Board issues opinions and takes binding decisions to arbitrate different positions on cross border cases between national data protection authorities.
IMI (Internal Market Information System) was chosen as the IT platform to support cooperation and consistency procedures under the GDPR. IMI helps public authorities across the EU to cooperate and exchange information. The GDPR is the 13th legal area supported by the system.
IMI has been developed by the European Commission’s DG GROW and was adapted to cater for the needs of the GDPR, in close cooperation with the Secretariat of the European Data Protection Board and the national supervisory authorities.
On 25 May, the first case was initiated in IMI, and shortly afterwards the supervisory authorities started to cooperate via the system. Currently, more than 30 cross-border cases are under investigation.
14 IMI modules, 19 forms and more than 10.000 data fields were put in place to address the needs of data protection authorities and the GDPR procedures.