EU Data protection group publishes pre-trial discovery guidance

The Article 29 Working Party, an EU data protection watchdog, has published a guidance document on pre-trial discovery for cross border civil litigation.

This working document provides guidance to data controllers subject to EU Law in dealing
with requests to transfer personal data to another jurisdiction for use in civil litigation. The
Working Party has issued this document to address its concern that there are different applications of Directive 95/46 (Data Protection Directive) in part as a result of the variety of approaches to civil litigation across the Member States.

In the first section of this document the Working Party briefly sets out the differences in
attitudes to litigation and in particular the pre-trial discovery process between common law
jurisdictions such as the United States and the United Kingdom and civil code jurisdictions.

The document goes on to set out guidelines for EU data controllers when trying to reconcile the demands of the litigation process in a foreign jurisdiction with the data protection obligations of Directive 95/46.

Download the full document here: http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/fsj/privacy/docs/wpdocs/2009/wp158_en.pdf