Caribbean Netherlands urged to pay attention to new GDPR

Businesses and residents on Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba were urged to take note of the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that went into effect on Friday for the European Union (EU). Al­though the current data-privacy legislation will remain in effect in the Caribbean Netherlands, the effects of this new regulation will also be felt on the three islands.

The GDPR regulates how all organizations, large and small, process personal data.

Stricter rules now apply for transferring and exchanging personal data to or with EU countries. The aim is to limit the risk of (digital) personal data fraud and make sure that all countries exchanging information with the EU have adequate levels of privacy protection. This also ap­plies to organizations in Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba. On the Data Protection Authority’s website, all infor­mation can be found about what this means for all who record or share personal data.

Roëlla Pourier of the Authority’s Secretariat explains: “The AVG provides much stricter rules on how to obtain authorization to handle personal data. You must be able to show that you have valid authorization from the data subject to process his or her data, what you will be do­ing with the information and whom you will be sharing it with.”

The authority collaborates with other protection agen­cies to monitor GDPR’s effects on the islands and to com­municate this information to organizations and individual citizens.

More information sessions will follow, flyers will be post­ed on our website, and the brochure What You Need to Know about GDPR is available for downloading on www. cbpbes.com. The Authority is interested in learning of any difficulties being experienced in this regard, to be able to respond.

To report any difficulties in this area, or for more in­formation on the new European GDPR, please contact Pourier via roella.pourier@rijksdienstcn.com or phone at +599 7158392.

The Daily Herald.