January 28, the European Day for the Protection of Personal Data, is celebrated in the country today, on the occasion of 17 years since the adoption of the Convention of the Council of Europe on the Protection of Personal Information. The convention is the first legally binding international document in the field of personal data protection. It aims to raise awareness and promote good practices for the protection of privacy and personal data. This is being reminded today by the OZLP adviser.

The new Macedonian legislation, adopted in February 2020 and harmonized with the existing European so-called GDPR (GDPR), began to be applied from August 24, 2021. Since the beginning of its application in the register maintained by the Personal Data Protection Agency, 5.621 controllers - companies and state authorities have appointed a personal data protection officer and have started or completed the procedure for harmonizing their operations with the law on personal data protection. It is interesting that according to the new legislation, all but one state body, regardless of whether it is a government, ministry, municipality, public company, primary or secondary school, public health institution, in the past 18 months had the obligation, not only to appoint an officer for the protection of personal data, but also to harmonize the operation with the Law on Personal Data Protection for the ways and needs for which the data from citizens are processed, said the Personal Data Protection Advisor.

With a small analysis of the register, as written in the announcement, it can be determined that more than half of the state authorities, not only did not start the procedure for harmonizing their operations with the law on personal data protection in the past 18 months, but in general have not appointed an internal or external personal data protection officer.

The example with the municipalities is striking. Only 12 out of a total of 81 municipalities appointed a ZLP officer and registered as a controller in the register of officers maintained by the ZLP Agency. That's why today, on the European Day for the Protection of Personal Data, with such irresponsibility of the state authorities, it is questioned who has access to our personal data that we have given them with trust, how the institutions and their employees behave and whether anyone bears moral, criminal or other responsibility, from non-application of the law for the protection of personal data, if the same is used and misused for other purposes, which we witness happens every day, the announcement points out.