4th European Banking Federation Data Protection Officers’ Forum in Brussels

The EBF organised on 30 November 2023 in its premises its fourth annual DPO Forum in Brussels. This event gathered around sixty DPOs as well as representatives of EU Data Protection Authorities and Financial Supervisory Authorities, among them the CSSF.

The agenda was quite ambitious with mostly three topics being actively debated by the participants, (i) “Artificial intelligence and GDPR” in a banking perspective, (ii) the right of access (of data subjects) and (iii) a few considerations pertaining to the European digital agenda.

The banking perspective of AI and GDPR was certainly the most discussed topic as participants were really keen on learning how to master Generative AI into processes, acting as DPOs. After having been exposed with the principles of generative AI and certain of its limits such as the “reversal curse”, came the queries surrounding the right application of the relevant data protection assessments as well as the challenges posed by the GDPR principles of fairness, minimisation and transparency when making use of generative AI.

Much was said, especially with a brainstorming on how one could try successfully plan, understand and mitigate the impacts of generative AI on the business to abide to the GDPR rules: a future daunting task awaiting DPOs!

As for the right of access and some developments re. the European digital agenda, DPOs benefited notably from presentations made by representatives of the European Commission Data Protection Unit as well the French CNIL and the European Data Protection Supervisors.

As the DPO forum was a huge success, it is highly likely that the EBF will organise another DPO forum next year. Let’s see which relevant issues would then be debated!