Transparency, An Essential Element Of The Right To Personal Data Protection

The importance of the right to personal data protection at European level, as a fundamental right, is recognized by the Art. 16 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and of the Art. 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. The Convention adopted by the Council of Europe in 1981 for the protection of individuals with regard to automatic processing of personal data, considered as the first legal instrument on the protection of personal data, establishes a number of specific guarantees concerning the rights which are recognized in this context to the individuals whose personal details are being processed. Thereafter, the provisions of this international instrument have been adopted and developed at national level and at EU level, with the passing of Directive no. 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. Thus, the right to information, the right to access, the right to rectification, the right not to be subjected to an automatic individual decision, the right to object and the right to file a complaint to the national supervisory authorities became legally binding rights. The right to information translates into the correlative obligation of the controller to provide the subject with details related to the processing of his/her personal data, including the aspect of how to exercise other individual rights. All these rights contribute to the transparency required to perform the processing of personal data and thus to guarantee the right to privacy and the right to personal data protection. In order to ensure effective implementation of these rights in Romania was established, according to the European model, the National Supervisory Authority for Personal Data Processing, with the role of defender of the right to privacy of individuals who may be affected by improper processing of personal data. This paper will analyze on the one hand, the general legal regime of the rights of data subjects, and on the other hand, the way in which the supervisory authority contributes to ensuring transparency of the personal data processing, by virtue of the exercise of its statutory powers, related to control and public awareness competencies.