Among the various provisions of the Monti government’s new economic measures (Law Decree no.201 of December 6, 2011) published in Official Gazette no. 284 of December 6, 2011, we find the introduction of a radical change to the Italian Privacy Code (Legislative Decree 196 of June 30, 2003).
In order to reduce the administrative burden on companies, by amending Article 4, paragraph 1, letter b) of the Privacy Code, Art.40, paragraph 2 excludes from the definition of personal data all information relating to private and public bodies or associations.
As a result of this exclusion the measures also include an amendment to Art. 4, paragraph 1, letter i) which defines who should be considered “an interested party” by the treatment of the data, namely the individual to whom the personal data refers. Whereas previously private and public bodies or associations could be “interested parties”, only natural persons are considered as “interested parties” with the current amendment.
Therefore this revolutionary provision limits the privacy protection of private and public bodies whose data can now be processed without having to obtain permission and restricts the right to data protection only to natural persons.
Alongside these significant changes, Monti’s measure also deletes the last sentence of Art. 9, paragraph 4 of the privacy Code, which detailed how to identify the natural person entitled to exercise rights on behalf of private bodies, public bodies or associations, paragraph 3-bis of art. 5, which excluded from the application of the Privacy Code the processing of data regarding public and private bodies and associations in communications between said bodies for administration and accountancy purposes, and finally also letter h) of paragraph 1 of article. 43 concerning the processing of data of private bodies, public bodies or associations when transferred abroad.
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