In her presentation of the 2024 budget for her office, Ms. Eirini Loizidou Nikolaidou, the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection, shared data regarding complaints and other matters handled in the period.
From 01/01/2023 to 10/11/2023, the Commissioner’s Office received 356 written complaints. Of these, 35% were related to unsolicited advertising messages sent to mobile phones, emails, or faxes.
The remaining complaints mostly concerned legal data processing, the exercise of subject rights (Articles 12,15,16,17,18,20,21), and data processing principles (legality, data minimization).
The document submitted to the Parliament states that the Commissioner’s decisions involve warnings, reprimands, imposition of administrative fines, and orders to data processors or controllers to comply with data subject requests.
This year, the Commissioner has issued 56 decisions as corrective measures, including 8 imposing administrative fines totaling €65,750.
Of these, €50,750 has already been collected, pertaining to fines imposed in 2023. Additionally, one decision was issued for Data Breach Incidents as corrective measures.
The same document notes that, as of 2023, two civil lawsuits have been filed by the Commissioner for the collection of monetary penalties and three appeals against her decisions.
It is further mentioned that, for the current year, 38 inspections have been conducted, of which eight were on-site inspections carried out spontaneously, in the context of investigating a complaint or notification of a personal data breach incident or following the examination of findings from other inspections, such as those conducted via questionnaires in the past.
