Article 32z – Competent bodies

For the purpose of carrying out the tasks referred to in this Article, each Member State shall designate one or more competent bodies in accordance with Article 37(1), which may be competent for particular sectors, but that collectively need to cover all sectors, to assist the public sector bodies which grant or refuse access for the re-use of certain categories of protected data. Member States may either establish one or more new competent bodies or rely on existing public sector bodies or on internal services of public sector bodies that fulfil the conditions laid down in this Section.

The competent bodies may be empowered to grant access for the re-use of certain categories of protected data pursuant to Union or national law which provides for such access to be granted. Where they grant or refuse access for re-use, those competent bodies shall be subject to Articles 32k, 32w, 32x, 32y and 32ab.

The competent bodies shall have adequate legal, financial, technical and human resources to carry out the tasks assigned to them, including the necessary technical knowledge to be able to comply with relevant Union or national law concerning the access regimes for the categories of protected data referred to in in Article 2(54).

The assistance referred to in paragraph 1 shall include, where necessary: (a) providing technical support by making available a secure processing environment for providing access for the re-use of data or documents; (b) providing guidance and technical support on how to best structure and store data to make that those data or documents easily accessible; (c) providing technical support for anonymization, pseudonymisation and state-of-the-art privacy-preserving methods. not limited to personal data, but also to commercially confidential information, including trade secrets or content protected by intellectual property rights; (d) assisting the public sector bodies, where relevant, to provide support to re-users in requesting consent for re-use from data subjects or permission from data holders in line with their specific decisions, including on the jurisdiction in which the data processing is intended to take place and assisting the public sector bodies in establishing technical mechanisms that allow the transmission of requests for consent or permission from re-users, where practically feasible; (e) providing public sector bodies with assistance in assessing the adequacy of contractual commitments made by a re-user pursuant to Article 32x(2).