Fundamental rights review of EU data collection instruments and programmes

This report is the result of a Pilot Project requested by the European Parliament, managed by the Commission and carried out by a group of independent experts. The scope of the project was to establish and support an independent experts’ group to carry out a fundamental rights review of existing EU legislation and instruments in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) that involve the collection, retention, storage or transfer of personal data. One outcome of the project is a database of AFSJ legislation and instruments with individual fundamental rights assessments (at http://brodolini.mbs.it/). The final report concludes that that fundamental rights safeguards need to be more consistently considered and applied in the AFSJ. The conclusions highlight five broad issues for further consideration: ambiguous definitions and open terms; law enforcement access to migration databases; the expansion of centralised databases; data retention periods; and information rights and duties.