Article 37 – Designation of the data protection officer

Paragraph 1

The controller and the processor shall designate a data protection officer in any case where:

the processing is carried out by a public authority or body, except for courts acting in their judicial capacity;
the core activities of the controller or the processor consist of processing operations which, by virtue of their nature, their scope and/or their purposes, require regular and systematic monitoring of data subjects on a large scale; or
the core activities of the controller or the processor consist of processing on a large scale of special categories of data pursuant to Article 9 or personal data relating to criminal convictions and offences referred to in Article 10.

Paragraph 2

A group of undertakings may appoint a single data protection officer provided that a data protection officer is easily accessible from each establishment.

Paragraph 3

Where the controller or the processor is a public authority or body, a single data protection officer may be designated for several such authorities or bodies, taking account of their organisational structure and size.

Paragraph 4

In cases other than those referred to in paragraph 1, the controller or processor or associations and other bodies representing categories of controllers or processors may or, where required by Union or Member State law shall, designate a data protection officer. The data protection officer may act for such associations and other bodies representing controllers or processors.

Paragraph 5

The data protection officer shall be designated on the basis of professional qualities and, in particular, expert knowledge of data protection law and practices and the ability to fulfil the tasks referred to in Article 39.

Paragraph 6

The data protection officer may be a staff member of the controller or processor, or fulfil the tasks on the basis of a service contract.

Paragraph 7

The controller or the processor shall publish the contact details of the data protection officer and communicate them to the supervisory authority.

As corrected by Corrigendum, OJ L 127, 23.5.2018, p. 2 ((EU) 2016/679) with regard to paragraph 1(c) of this article.

References

Infringements regarding the obligations of the controller and the processor pursuant to this article shall, in accordance with Article 83(2), be subject to administrative fines up to 10 000 000 EUR, or in the case of an undertaking, up to 2 % of the total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year, whichever is higher.

(97)	Where the processing is carried out by a public authority, except for courts or independent judicial authorities when acting in their judicial capacity, where, in the private sector, processing is carried out by a controller whose core activities consist of processing operations that require regular and systematic monitoring of the data subjects on a large scale, or where the core activities of the controller or the processor consist of processing on a large scale of special categories of personal data and data relating to criminal convictions and offences, a person with expert knowledge of data protection law and practices should assist the controller or processor to monitor internal compliance with this Regulation. In the private sector, the core activities of a controller relate to its primary activities and do not relate to the processing of personal data as ancillary activities. The necessary level of expert knowledge should be determined in particular according to the data processing operations carried out and the protection required for the personal data processed by the controller or the processor. Such data protection officers, whether or not they are an employee of the controller, should be in a position to perform their duties and tasks in an independent manner.

Article 18 Obligation to notify the supervisory authority

2.	Member States may provide for the simplification of or exemption from notification only in the following cases and under the following conditions:
	where, for categories of processing operations which are unlikely, taking account of the data to be processed, to affect adversely the rights and freedoms of data subjects, they specify the purposes of the processing, the data or categories of data undergoing processing, the category or categories of data subject, the recipients or categories of recipient to whom the data are to be disclosed and the length of time the data are to be stored, and/or where thecontroller, in compliance with the national law which governs him, appoints a personal data protection official, responsible in particular: for ensuring in an independent manner the internal application of the national provisions taken pursuant to this Directive for keeping the register of processing operations carried out by thecontroller, containing the items of information referred to in Article 21 (2), thereby ensuring that the rights and freedoms of the data subjects are unlikely to be adversely affected by the processing operations.