The role of the data protection authorities in supervising police and criminal justice authorities processing personal data

In this chapter, we focus on the role of supervisory authorities monitoring police and criminal justice authorities. This issue raises delicate questions, as the EU legislator was called upon to strike the right balance between diverse interests. In today’s context, no one can deny the importance of access and storage of data, as well as of cross-border data exchanges by police and judicial authorities for the prevention of and the fight against crime. However, no one can deny either the importance of respecting fundamental rights and data protection rules, when collecting, storing, and exchanging personal data. The role of these supervisory authorities constitutes an essential tool to ensure that an appropriate balance is taken and implemented by national police and criminal justice authorities; hence the sensitivity and interest of addressing this issue. After providing a birds-eye view of the EU data protection law in section II, we will briefly explain the basic role of supervisory authorities in section III. Section IV will focus on the requirements for independence of supervisory authorities. In section V, we will look at the competence of such authorities in the supervision of judges and prosecutors. Section VI analyses the powers of supervisory authorities in the criminal justice sector. Section VII provides some practical details on handling complaints and modes of cooperation of supervisory authori- ties. Our concluding remarks are presented in section VIII.